14 December 2023 , 15:47
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Downing Street has intervened in the nuked blood scandal - to insist there isn't one.
Rishi Sunak's staff responded to campaigners after they repeatedly begged for a meeting with him to discuss why the medical records of servicemen who took part in Cold War weapons trials are missing.
Two months ago, the Atomic Weapons Establishment admitted it may hold almost 5,000 individual blood tests of nuclear veterans, but it was "too expensive" to search them all and confirm how many there were.
The Mirror also uncovered a list of 150 top secret documents, hidden in the AWE for decades and never published, which relate to blood and urine tests during hundreds of radiation experiments between 1952 and 1967. And his own backbenchers have accused Sunak's government of being part of a cover-up.
* You can support the veterans' legal crowdfunder to bring their case to court HERE
Although the Ministry of Defence insists the files do not include any data, their titles indicate they do. They include one named "medical report - blood count data". Just last week, the government announced a review of the records, with a defence minister calling their contents "tantalising" and promising to publish whatever he could.
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Yet now the PM's Downing Street aide Mandy Godridge has written on his behalf saying: "The AWE does not hold any medical records for any former service personnel.
"Any medical records taken either before, during or after participation in the UK nuclear weapon tests are held in individual military medical records."
As the Mirror has repeatedly proven, veterans' personnel files, when opened, are missing the blood tests, annual medicals, and other health records taken during the nuclear weapons tests. If such blood tests existed, they would provide incontrovertible proof that radiation entered troops' bodies with potential long-term consequences, which could lead to large compensation payouts.
The letter from the PM's aideCampaigner Alan Owen, who has been denied access to his own father's service medical files despite being diagnosed with a genetically-inherited condition, said: "His officials are making Rishi Sunak look like an idiot. He needs to take personal charge of this, the way Boris Johnson did when he met with us last year to discuss a medal.
"Boris saw the first evidence of medical records being unlawfully withheld, and was horrified. We now have even more proof, and are building a legal case. Rishi needs to sit down with us before it turns into a multi-billion pound headache for him, just like the infected blood inquiry."
Mr Owen, of Carmarthen, south Wales, wrote to Sunak in October after the PM told the House of Commons the AWE held no medical records. He warned the PM he was being misled by officials, and asked him to urgently correct the record in Parliament and meet with campaigners to hear for himself what was wrong.
The response from Downing Street fails to address the claim that the PM was mistaken, and claims that anyone who needs access to the records can ask via their GP. But when veterans or their families do so, they are told no such records exist.
The letter Alan Owen wrote to Sunak, warning him he was misleading ParliamentThe PM's office seems unaware of the growing pile of evidence, AWE public statements on the issue, or the review that is now being undertaken by his own government. We reported last week that junior defence minister Andrew Murrison had told Parliament he and officials would review the documents uncovered by the Mirror to see if any could be declassified and made public.
He has previously stated that blood and urine tests were held at AWE as part of the "scientific data" from the trials. There has been no explanation as to why duplicates are missing from individual medical records. Falsifying, withholding or destroying medical records is a criminal offence.
Labour has promised compensation, a public inquiry, and full publication of the records if it gains power at the next general election.
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