Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard has “performed backflips” over the fight for justice for victims of the Nuked Blood Scandal, say campaigners
Victims of the Nuked Blood Scandal have been promised answers this summer as a minister has flip-flopped on supporting them for a second time.
Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard was shown a clip of nuclear veterans being interviewed on a Newsnight special, and asked if he and the Prime Minister would agree to their request for a meeting to discuss their evidence of a criminal cover-up over human radiation experiments.
Mr Pollard did not answer the question, but pledged there would be answers soon from a ministerial review of the archives ordered last year in the wake of a BBC documentary.
“We’ll be making an announcement in the summer about what that review has found,” said Mr Pollard. “I want to see justice for those folks that were exposed to nuclear testing all those decades ago, because we’re running out of time for many of them still being around.”
About 40,000 UK and Commonwealth troops took part in the Cold War weapons testing programme, held in Australia and the Pacific between 1952 and 1967. Only 10% of them are believed to still be alive. They report a catalogue of early deaths, cancers, blood conditions, miscarriages for their wives and 10 times the usual rate of birth defects in their children.
Keir Starmer, who told veterans “your campaign is our campaign” in Oppposition, has ignored requests to meet them to discuss evidence of the Mirror’s 3-year investigation in to secret biological monitoring of troops, with blood tests, urine tests, and chest x-rays ordered, taken, and subsequently removed from the men’s medical files.
Speaking to Newsnight presenter Faisal Islam, Mr Pollard appeared to take credit for the review.
“As a constituency MP, before the election I was campaigning on behalf of nuclear test veterans to get the info they need. That’s why as a government we’ve committed to review the files held by MoD and the Atomic Weapons Establishment,” he said.
“We know the consequences for many of those people participating in the tests are carried, not just by individuals, but by their family members. That’s why we want to work out what we can declassify and share, and get to the heart of trying to get justice for those individuals.”
But the minister had a different view just last November, when he was asked in Parliament about delivering compensation to the same people.
“The MoD has no current plans to develop a specific compensation scheme for either nuclear test veterans or their families,” he said, suggesting they apply for a war pension instead. The MoD says it has no data on nuclear veteran war pensions, but it is believed only around 1% are successful, due to the lack of available medical data.
Yet two years earlier, he had demanded payouts for nuclear veterans while in Opposition. “It’s really dumb that the UK government has been denying not only a medal for their exceptional service 70 years ago, but compensation too,” he told the Mirror’s News Agenda podcast. Until those veterans get the recognition and compensation they need, this campaign must continue.”
Veterans say they are bemused at the minister’s apparent changes of opinion. Alan Owen of campaign group LABRATS said: “The minister has performed backflips, in an effort not to land on the main point – he’s the one in government, and he’s the one with a moral responsibility to deliver the compensation he demanded.
“Why did he change his mind after hard evidence of wrongdoing emerged, and why has he changed it back again when asked about it by the BBC?”