Public officials who lie to cover-up a scandal will face criminal sanctions, it has been confirmed
Nuclear test veterans: Duty of candour update
Any official caught lying as part of a cover-up will face jail time, a Labour minister has confirmed.
The government promised that the new Hillsborough Law will include prison sentences for any public servant who does not tell the truth.
But the minister refused to say if it will apply to those involved in the Nuked Blood Scandal, in which servicemen who took part in nuclear weapons tests have found medical records taken at the time are now missing from their files.
Officials at the Atomic Weapons Establishment have spent years insisting they do not hold medical information about troops who took part. Even after they were forced by a Mirror investigation to publish thousands of pages of information, and hundreds of blood and urine test results, officials are still briefing ministers they hold no medical data.
Veterans who ask for the medical records, and their next of kin who have a lawful right to see them, have been either refused access, or provided with files that have huge chunks covering their service at the weapons trials missing.
We have also established some of the files were removed as the result of a ‘special directive’ from the office of a junior minister, although the Ministry of Defence now says it cannot find any trace of such an instruction.
Last month Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said: “We are witnesses to a live cover-up, we are witnesses to misconduct in public office, and if we don’t act we become complicit in that live cover-up.”
He added: “I am not prepared to be complicit, and I will go to the police by the end of this year with the evidence you have got if we do not get movement. Perhaps also as the Hillsborough Law comes on to the statute book that might start to bring out the evidence that will strengthen that investigation.”
Today in Parliament ministers were put on the spot as campaigning South Shields MP Emma Lewell-Buck asked about the ‘duty of candour’ in the new law, a legal requirement for public officials to tell the truth or face harsh consequences.
She said: “Can I please ask my right honourable friend if the duty of candour in the Hillsborough Law will apply to the 70-year long nuclear test veterans scandal?”
Paymaster General Nick Thomas-Symonds failed to confirm or deny if nuclear veterans would be included, but said: “I know she’s been a longstanding champion for justice for victims of the infected blood scandal and indeed the nuclear test veterans that she mentioned.
“We are looking to introduce a very broad duty of candour, a general duty of candour. I should also point out that criminal sanctions are going to be really important to punish the most egregious breaches, and I’m pleased to confirm to the House today as the Prime Minister announced in September, that the bill we will bring forward will include criminal sanctions.”
Afterwards Ms Lewell-Buck said: “The duty of candour that will enforce honesty and openness on public servants and bodies absolutely must apply to our nuclear veterans.
“If the nuclear veterans’ 70-year long fight for truth and justice isn’t included in the proposed law then it will not fully restore trust in our institutions.”
