Victims of the Nuked Blood scandal met with Prime Minister Andy Burnham in Downing Street yesterday. Three descendants of nuclear test veterans met the PM and Defence Secretary Wes Streeting to discuss how to resolve seven decades of official cover-up.
Ministry of Defence review findings
It follows a Ministry of Defence review which found evidence of an “extensive” and “consistent” blood testing programme during Cold War nuclear weapons trials. It was hidden behind national security as a state secret until discovered by the Mirror in 2022.
Before he entered office, Mr Burnham called the scandal “a criminal cover-up on an industrial scale” and called for a special tribunal to investigate it.
PM's commitment to next steps
On Thursday, he wrote on X: “Today, Wes Streeting and I met some of the representatives of the nuclear veteran community. We talked about what the veterans and their families have been through and what matters most to them now. This is the start of a conversation, not the end, and we'll be working together on next steps.”
Government lawyers knew of exposure
It comes after emails recently showed that Government lawyers knew that troops were exposed to radioactive fallout, but never admitted it in court. Senior officials at the Treasury Solicitor's department were sent a whistleblowing report in November 2014, just three weeks after a judge had ordered fresh hearings.
But the data was never shared with the court. The case failed two years later over "insufficient evidence" that servicemen were exposed.
