The Ministry of Defence has finally admitted it ran an "extensive" programme of human radiation experiments on troops. A two-year review has confirmed that ministers and officials falsely denied that medical data was collected from servicemen and civilians at nuclear weapons tests for more than a decade. Worse, the MoD says it has been unable to locate the results, leaving veterans continuing to suffer after 70 years without answers.
Veterans React to the Admission
John Morris, who has waited a lifetime to find out why his son Steven died in his cot aged four months, and why he has had cancer and a blood condition, said: "This is vindication, but there's no relief. There's no truth, no justice. We were labrats in a government experiment which they didn't bother to keep the paperwork for. But worse is the cover-up which continues. They lied, hid it all behind national security, and have come clean now only because we forced them. People should go to jail for this."
Key Findings of the Review
The review, ordered after the Mirror exposed the Nuked Blood Scandal in 2022, has found:
- A secret hoard of 50,000 files that include nuclear veteran records but have not been examined
- More than 5,000 nuclear test veterans deliberately excluded from government health studies
- Veterans who applied for a war pension had their medical records permanently stripped, denying them proper diagnosis and treatment
- Thousands of medical records were unlawfully destroyed, some as recently as last year
Political and Legal Repercussions
Prime Minister-in-waiting Andy Burnham has privately told staff to begin work on reparations, compensation and commemoration for the nuclear test programme, including setting up a special tribunal to determine the extent of government lies. Criminal allegations of perjury, perverting the course of justice, fraud by false representation and misconduct in public office are being considered in a major crime review by Thames Valley Police. Officers have asked the Atomic Weapons Establishment to provide details of emails from 2014 which we reported this week, discussing a whistleblower report about fallout on inhabited areas, which was also covered up.
Ongoing Concerns
The review has not looked into how thousands of records were classified, why courts were told monitoring never happened, or why in 2018 Parliament was told by a minister that the MoD was "unable to locate any information" about blood testing. As recently as 2023, ministers said "only one blood test" existed. It has also failed to look into the records of civilians, indigenous people, merchant navy crews and RAF units monitoring foreign nuclear weapons tests, who were all similarly monitored.
Calls for Justice
Lord Tom Watson, who as deputy Labour leader asked the first questions about the blood tests, said: "This report indicates a grievous and ongoing cover-up that continued despite the fact that many people across government must have known. It's beyond belief that applying for a war pension means your medical notes are destroyed, and that will have cost lives. The only way to clean that up is to use the new Hillsborough Law to get them to now come forward and say what they know."
