Tory and Labour MPs launched a joint attack on the government yesterday, demanding that nuclear test veterans’ blood records be released and there be an immediate medal awarded.
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab promised to investigate the evidence of veterans having their medical information withheld, and said officials had been asked again to look at a medal.
It came after a week of revelations in which the veterans were intimidated by armed police at the Ministry of Defence, the Mirror revealed blood samples were being illegally withheld by the Atomic Weapons Establishment, and test veterans were applauded as they marched at the Cenotaph.
Salford MP Rebecca Long-Bailey told deputy PM Dominic Raab when he stood in at Prime Minister’s Questions that a 1958 Air Ministry order made it routine for blood to be taken from servicemen at the tests.
She said: “I’ve been made aware that many veterans and their families have reported being unable to obtain these test results, and so denied the ability to make any sense of what they and in some cases their families suffered.
“Can the Justice Secretary investigate, and inform me of the legal rights of these men in obtaining their medical records, and will he undertake to ask the Prime Minister to order these medical files be opened to veterans and the UK Health and Security Agency, immediately?”
Raab insisted the records should be available, but promised to look into the evidence she presented him with “and I’ll make sure on the more specific points she gets an adequate answer”.
In a powerful intervention, Tory grandee Sir John Hayes then immediately backed her call, saying Boris Johnson had met the veterans in June to hear their case.
He asked: “Will this deputy prime minister, and our new Prime Minister, recognise them too, not only by doing what the honourable lady has asked for, but by giving them the service medal they so richly deserve, and we owe them?”
Raab replied: “We should be forever grateful to all those service personnel who participated in the British nuclear testing programme. I can tell him, I can assure him, we have asked officials to look again at recognition with medals and any recommendation will be announced in the usual way.”
Next Monday, government ministers are expected to attend a ‘national moment of acknowledgement’ to mark the 70th anniversary of the first atom bomb tests, at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.
Hundreds of survivors of the bomb test programme, their families and carers, will also attend.