The Ministry of Defence has released five reports after the government promised to embark on a comprehensive examination of the information the department holds on medical records.
The reports cover the three armed services, the Atomic Weapons Establishment, and an overall narrative.
The narrative report addresses the core issue at the heart of the veterans’ demands: an explanation of what happened to their blood and urine samples.
The report says that a range of policies were in place around blood tests during the nuclear testing programme., but it says no evidence was found to suggest there was an overall policy on urine testing although this was done on an ad hoc basis following suspected exposure to a nuclear explosion.
Blood tests were taken for two reasons: to assess an individual’s fitness to work before they were deployed, and to be used as a baseline, in the event of a future accidental exposure to radiation levels above the maximum permissible doses.
The report said that care was taken with the testing but the military authorities were aware that they might be liable for future compensation claims.
The veterans say that access to their medical records – and principally records of their blood and urine tests – are crucial to their campaign to prove their health suffered as a result of exposure to radiation.
The MOD says there needs to be reliable evidence to raise reasonable doubt of a causal link between exposure to radiation and certain cancers.
The report says that the medical records do show in some cases in clear terms the details of blood and urine tests, but in most cases there are no records available.
One of the nuclear veterans told Newsnight on Monday that he expected the report to be a whitewash.
Brian Unthank said: “My take on it is it is going to turn out to be a total whitewash as usual.
“My understanding is there’s no comments about the missing medical records, the compensation, a lot of other things. So it has been cut to the bare minimum I think.”
The report acknowledges that many veterans believe they have suffered ill health as a result of their service.
But it repeats the MOD claim, based it would say on independent scientific and medical research, that the overall levels of mortality and cancer among nuclear test veterans is similar to matched service personnel and lower than the general population.
