Labour is under pressure to act on the Nuked Blood scandal after a video of ministers’ broken promises was seen by 3 million people
A video detailing Labour’s broken promises to nuclear veterans has been seen by more people than the 10 o’clock news.
Growing awareness of the goverment’s failure to resolve the £5bn Nuked Blood scandal is now putting ministers under pressure to come up with answers.
A defence minister is expected to make a written statement to the House of Commons tomorrow to reveal interim findings of a review into allegations of human radiation experiments carried out on troops in the Cold War.
And it comes as more evidence emerges of veterans’ medical records being tampered with to remove evidence of monitoring them before, during and after they served at nuclear weapons tests.
Peter Stefanovic, lawyer and founder of the Campaign for Social Justice, has compiled clips of Defence Secretary John Healey, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard while in Opposition, all calling for the Tories to set up compensation schemes for the veterans.
In just six weeks it has been viewed by 3 million people – more than watch the 10 o’clock news on either BBC or ITN.
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“That doesn’t happen unless the public get behind something. It illustrates to the government that public consciousness and outrage continues to grow,” said Mr Stefanovic.
“We are hitting the public and the government in the face with this every day. Something has to give.”
Lawyers acting for the veterans have threatened to launch a £5bn lawsuit for the missing medical records, unless the government accepts a cheaper offer of a one-year special tribunal, with capped costs, to investigate the cover-up.
And police are assessing a criminal complaint of misconduct in public office, linked to a secret database with information about blood and urine testing of troops, unlawfully locked behind national security at the Atomic Weapons Establishment. After the Mirror forced some of the files open, the entire archive is due to be declassified.
Now veteran Dave Whyte – who has been ruled “vexatious”| by the Ministry of Defence over a long Freedom of Information battle aimed at discovering his radiation dose after he was sent into Ground Zero at Operation Grapple in 1958 – has discovered a huge bundle of his personal medical records have gone missing.
After more than a decade and campaign group LABRATS raising his case with the Veterans Minister Al Carns, Dave, 88, of Kirkcaldy, Fife, has been sent his medical notes from his 10 years in service.
It contains just 13 sheets of paper, some of them duplicates. His 10 years of annual medical examinations are missing, along with 12 sets of clinical notes and 8 records of visiting the medic. The papers show two blood tests and a chest x-ray were administered for no clinical reason, but only one set of test results is in his file. And the results of a gland biopsy, conducted two years after the nuclear tests when his lymph nodes swelled up and doctors decided he had a blood disorder, are also missing.
Dave said: “I’ve asked again about my records from the decontamination centre I was sent to, and have been informed that I am still barred from asking FOIs. It is 14 years since I have been banned, convicted murderers serve less time.”
The Mirror’s evidence of the Nuked Blood scandal featured in a BBC documentary last year, called Britain’s Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story, and in a Newsnight special report last week.