Calls for an urgent one-year public inquiry into the missing medical records of nuclear veterans have been backed by the MP who will lead scrutiny of top brass.
Tan Dhesi was voted chairman of the defence select committee which will have the job of holding the Defence Secretary, his officials, senior members of the military and junior ministers to account for the next five years.
The Mirror revealed last week there are now allegations of criminal offences committed at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, an agency of the Ministry of Defence.
It is claimed that blood test data and discussions which would prove the veterans’ claims of radiation injury were unlawfully locked away on top secret databases behind bogus national security claims.
Parliament’s select committees are picked in a cross-party vote and have the power to compel witnesses, take evidence, produce their own reports and even hold mini-inquiries of their own.
“You’ve done great work on nuclear veterans and I’ve been very supportive of that. That’s something I feel strongly about,” Mr Dhesi told the Mirror’s News Agenda podcast from the Labour conference in Liverpool.
“We owe it to them that they have transparency, that there is justice. I hope that will be the case, that we will be looking into these things, that there will be an inquiry. Obviously the details of that have to be sorted out by the government, but that is something I will be supportive of.”
His support, if matched by the rest of the committee when it is formed next month, means ministers will come under pressure to resolve the veterans’ long-running fight for justice, which has been backed by the Mirror for 40 years.
Veterans have reported for years that their medical records are missing, but the MoD lawyers have repeatedly told judges at the European Court of Human Rights, Supreme Court, and High Court that it was not done.
After the Mirror uncovered evidence that blood testing of troops took place during the atomic weapons trials at the height of the Cold War, the AWE was forced to publish thousands of pages of information about the health monitoring programme.
It was held on a secret database codenamed ‘Merlin’ which had the highest possible security classification, yet held information about thousands of blood tests and some of the results.
Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has said he will back veterans taking their evidence to the police if the government does not call an inquiry before Christmas.
The veterans will be presenting their case to the Labour conference at a fringe event tomorrow.
