MoD carried out health audit on veterans
The real detail of the study into Nuclear Test Veterans was covered in the Sunday Mirror and was more interesting than previously disclosed. You can see the full story here…..
A survey by the Ministry of Defence shows 83 per cent have since developed between two and nine serious long-term illnesses. Some have more than 10.
Hopefully the data will act as a spur to push the Government to provide better services for veterans. But there is also one other point about information extracted from veterans. The story continues….
Asked if they believe their health had been affected by being at a nuclear test site, 28 per cent said they were certain it had, 23 per cent thought it had and 24 per cent said it may have done – a total of 75 per cent. Only eight per cent said it definitely had not.
One of the key issues in the ongoing court case is “limitation” – that any person bringing a case for negligence has to do so within three years of the date they found out that another party’s negligence damaged their health.
The Government has consistently argued that many of the veterans involved in the current court case have exceeded the three year limit, but it is sometimes difficult to show when a person ‘became aware’ of the cause of their injuries or poor health.
For the MoD this survey could now act as a reference point, from which they can say veterans definitely believed that tests caused their poor health as of November 2011. That could have implications for veterans who are yet to bring their individual case to court.
For now however the focus must be on the next hearing at the Supreme Court in November.
