HC Deb 20 March 1991 vol 188 cc375-82

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Boswell.]

10 pm

Mr. Jack Ashley (Stoke-on-Trent, South)

The spectacle of the British Ministry of Defence fighting British ex-service men with the same determination it shows to enemies of the country is disgraceful. Nuclear test veterans have been victims of not only radiation but hostility, miscalculation, dogmatism, meanness and complacency by the Ministry of Defence.

Tonight, I want the House, and the MOD, to consider new evidence which supports the claims of nuclear test veterans, but first I want to look at the National Radiological Protection Board's report. This scientific report was scandalously distorted by political presentation. The crucial "Conclusions" page began: It is concluded from the study that participation has not had a detectable effect on the participants expectation of life nor their total risk of developing cancer. Then, almost as an afterthought, it says: apart from a possible effect on the risks of developing Multiple Myeloma and Leukaemia". People died of multiple myeloma and leukaemia.

The report could, and should, have opened with the sentence, "Participation may have caused death from multiple myeloma and leukaemia although not from other cancers." Instead, it opens with a disclaimer and buries in a long paragraph this revealing comment: There may well have been small hazards of leukaemia and multiple myeloma associated with participation in the tests". It is not surprising that, as a result of the detail of the report, the Department of Social Security is now paying pensions for multiple myeloma and leukaemia. Fortunately, it does not have the gall to demand rigid proof of causation, as does the MOD.

Why is the MOD persisting in its harsh interpretation of the report? The Minister must be aware of the supporting evidence for the test veterans' case. Although the Australian Commission was not a full epidemiological study, it concluded: Their exposure to radiation in the trial programme has increased the risk of cancer among 'nuclear veterans'". The Minister must also know that the epidemiological New Zealand study found a fivefold increase in the risk of death from leukaemia among test veterans—a figure comparable with the three-and-a-half times figure found by the NRPB report. The New Zealand study concluded that the relationship was likely to be causal because a similar excess risk was found in the British study. Two distinct studies found additional risk for the veterans. That cannot be dismissed.

The MOD is burying its head and shutting its eyes and its mind to existing evidence. It prefers to wait for the follow-up report from the NRPB, which is not due until 1992, by which time even more veterans will have died without compensation. That is shifty, evasive and deplorable.

I sent the Minister a copy of my speech in advance so that he might be able to respond constructively to what I am about to say. The new evidence was revealed in the excellent Scottish Television programme "Dispatches", researched by Eamonn O'Neill. The programme claimed that, on 28 April 1958, in the Grapple Y test—the second off Christmas island—the megaton nuclear explosion was at a much lower height than the 8,000 ft officially reported. This lower height would have substantially increased the radioactive fallout because a low-level explosion sucks up material that becomes heavily radioactive. Where that material lands, when it falls back to earth, is a matter of life and death. The programme claimed that a violent rainstorm occurred, and radioactive rain poured on to Christmas island, drenching the men, soaking the ground, and polluting the lagoons.

Will the Minister confirm or deny that the explosion was at a low height, that material was sucked up, and that it fell back with the rain on to Christmas island and into the seas around?

It is also claimed that the explosion took place just one and a half miles away from Christmas island, and not at the official distance of five miles. If this is the case, it is even more likely that the island became contaminated. If the Minister says he has no information, I will bring a deputation to see him to support the television claims. They must be investigated and cannot be ignored.

On the crucial question of safety, the Government are on record as claiming that adequate precautions were taken to protect the men. Dosimeters were used to measure individual exposure to radiation, and it is said that no one was at risk, but inferior film was used in those days. It was not sensitive to low doses. It reached only to gamma radiation and not the more dangerous beta radiation. Will the Minister confirm this? I do not mind being interrupted at any stage. The most damaging claim, supported by the NRPB report, is that exposure to internal contamination could not be recorded on the dosimeters.

These are crucial points, because much of the Ministry's safety claim rests on the fact that exposure to gamma radiation was measured, and that it was at a safe level. If there was no measure of beta exposure, or exposure from internal contamination, there can be no valid claim of safety; it has all been a mirage. Nor can there be any confidence in the argument of the NRPB in its report that there was no association between exposure to radiation and excess leukaemia and multiple myeloma. If it knew about only part of the exposure, discussion of the issue is fruitless.

Far more relevant is the following suggestion in the New Zealand report: The possibility cannot be excluded that there could have been significant external exposure to neutron radiation or internal exposure due to inhalation or ingestion". It is also significant that the greatest relative risk of excess leukaemia was suffered by men thought by the MOD not to have been exposed to radiation—by that is meant external gamma radiation. Could those men, who suffered more leukaemias than others, have ingested fatal beta radiation doses unknown to the MOD? Could that have happened because the cloud of radioactive material over Christmas island was washed down by rain and entered the food chain?

Does the Minister know whether the water on Christmas island, used for drinking and washing by the men, was regularly checked for radioactivity? Was the water on the south side of the island, where the men swam and caught fish, checked for radioactivity? Again, the House is entitled to answers.

Despite claims by the MOD that radiation levels found in fish were minimal, evidence was put forward in the television programme that one of the scientists found that his geiger counter went berserk when checking radioactivity in some of the fish caught off the south-east point of the island.

Much concern and many unanswered questions have emerged from just one well-researched television programme. Are they the tip of the iceberg? That question can be answered only by a judicial inquiry, and I repeat my request for one. The urgent task is compensation for the veterans while they are alive to benefit from it. The United States Congress was persuaded that there could be no certainty that the tests were safe. Its nuclear test veterans were given the benefit of the doubt. No rigid proof of damaging exposure was demanded. American test veterans now get compensation if they develop any one of 15 cancers.

In Britain, only the nuclear industry has moved. In January of this year, as part of a compensation agreement, British Nuclear Fuels plc paid out £150,000 to the widow of a former plant worker who died of leukaemia. What has been the response of the MOD? Officially, nothing but statements that proof is required and that the study must be awaited. In military parlance, the MOD is cowering in its bunker. It is afraid of the truth. However, just yesterday, it was confirmed in a parliamentary reply to me that the Ministry is investigating the merits of a compensation scheme for radiation-linked disease—similar to that operated by BNFL. Let me warn the Minister that, if the scheme does not include the nuclear test veterans, there will be uproar. Will the Minister tell us tonight just what is stirring within the timid body of the MOD?

Our nuclear test veterans deserve compensation to rank with that given elsewhere. They have suffered injustice since the 1950s. Successive Governments have failed to help them. Many of them are dying with great suffering. They, and their widows, feel what I can only describe as a dignified bitterness. It is time for the Government to put an end to this shameful episode in British military history.

I hope I shall not receive a negative response tonight from the Minister. Perhaps he will recall the words of the Prime Minister, praising the dedication and heroism of our men in the Gulf. He should bear it in mind that praise is not enough. What the men need is justice.

10.14 pm
The Minister of State for the Armed Forces (Mr. Archie Hamilton)

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) on obtaining this Adjournment debate. He has, over the years, persistently campaigned for compensation for those personnel who participated in the United Kingdom's nuclear test programme. I applaud him for his diligence and dedication and I also thank him for giving me prior notice of the points that he made in his speech. He is well aware" Mr. Speaker, that the nub of the matter is the need to prove causation—that is, a causal link between participation in the programme and any subsequent illness. I emphasise at the outset that there is no such evidence.

The young men who took part in the test programme are now middle-aged or elderly and, inevitably, will begin to suffer from the sort of illnesses that might befall all of us as we grow older. The fact is that the incidence of cancer in the participants closely matches that in the normal population.

The question of the nuclear test veterans is, as I say, not new and has been discussed in the House at length. The House will recall the considerable discussions that took place on the subject in 1990, when attempts were made to introduce an amendment to the Social Security Bill to permit the payment of compensation to those service men who participated in the test programme and who subsequently contracted various cancers which they attribute to their involvement in the tests. The proposal was, after much debate, rejected.

Considerable concern has been expressed in the House and elsewhere about the nuclear weapons test programme conducted in the south Pacific in the 1950s and the suggestion that those who took part in the tests have now developed illness as a result of their participation. The concern is understandable. The widespread publicity given to the allegations, and the potentially harmful effects to which radiation can give rise, have considerably added to public anxiety and concern. Cancer is a common cause of death in the developed world; indeed some 20 per cent. of deaths can be attributed to the disease. There are, tragically, more than 100,000 cancer-related deaths a year in this country. It has been estimated that some 1,000 of those deaths may be caused by the various natural sources of radiation all round us. Many participants in the test programme, therefore, would by now be suffering from cancer, or would have died, if they had spent their service entirely in this country and never gone to the south Pacific. It is inevitable, however, and in the circumstances understandable, that many who have developed cancer should attribute their illness to the after-effects of the bomb tests.

The nuclear safety standards implemented during the tests bear favourable comparison with the standards in force today. Individuals who were liable to be exposed to radiation were issued with dosimeters to record the radiation experienced. The safety regulations in force were consistent with recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection and advice from the Medical Research Council. The Government have confirmed that safety precautions were properly monitored and stringently implemented.

While the Government have remained confident over the years that the safety precautions were adequate and that participants were not subjected to any significant health hazards, they have been anxious to alleviate their fears. Bearing in mind the difficulties in determining causation, it was decided that there should be a study to provide up-to-date and reliable information to show whether a problem existed and, if so, its extent. In October 1983, the National Radiological Protection Board was commissioned to undertake a study of the participants and investigate any correlation with radiation exposure. The study compared the mortality and cancer incidence of more than 22,000 men who took part in the tests with a similar group of service men and civilians who were not involved in the tests.

The study, the results of which were published in the British Medical Journal, concluded, as the right hon. Member acknowledges, that participation in the tests had no detectable effect on the participants' life expectancy. Nor did the study establish a causal relationship between the incidence of cancer and participation in the nuclear test programme; and, in particular, there was no evidence of increased incidence of any cancer with increased radiation dose, contrary to what might have been expected if those cancers were radiation-induced.

Mr. Ashley

I am absolutely incredulous at the Minister's speech. Does he deny that the report to which he referred said: There may well have been small hazards of leukaemia and multiple myeloma associated with participation in the tests"? Will he deal with the new evidence which I have raised and which was brought forward in a television programme, bearing in mind that the Americans are paying their veterans and have given them the benefit of the doubt? Why cannot the Minister give the benefit of the doubt to our veterans?

Mr. Hamilton

As to the specific parts of the study, the right hon. Gentleman anticipates me; I am about to come to leukaemia and multiple myeloma and will also refer to the American compensation scheme.

As the right hon. Member said, the study showed a small but statistically significant increase in the incidence of certain leukaemias and multiple myeloma in test participants, compared with the control group. However—I think he would also acknowledge this—the control group exhibited an extraordinary low incidence of those two cancers compared with the average for England and Wales and the NRPB concluded that those differences were likely to be largely due to chance.

The right hon. Gentleman criticises the NRPB's presentation of its conclusions. I can say only that the NRPB is an independent and internationally respected scientific institution. Its report was well received by the medical community and has not been criticised by any of the leaders in epidemiology. Internationally accepted estimates of risk from radiation predict that not one person would be expected to die as a result of exposure to radiation from the United Kingdom test programme.

The Government regard the result of the NRPB study as vindicating their view that the safety precautions adopted during the test programme were effective. The report went on to recommend that observations on the groups of participants and controls should be maintained for a further 10 years and the Government were pleased to accept that suggestion. The NRPB will, therefore, continue to monitor the cancer and mortality incidence of the participants over a 10-year period and will publish an updated study next year.

I now turn to the specific points made by the right hon. Gentleman. I must say at the outset that the irresponsible and sometimes misleading allegations made by the "Dispatches" television programme, from which the right hon. Gentleman drew many of his points, were based on a series of factual inaccuracies. The unfounded allegations made by the programme can only add unnecessarily to the concern and anxiety of those who participated in the nuclear test programme and their relatives.

An example is that the programme showed some people wearing special clothing but not radiation badges, the implication being that the participants were being improperly protected and monitored. The clothing was used, in fact, as protection against the intense heat flash from the detonations. As they were located at a mustering point at least 34 km from ground zero at the time of detonation, the dose from the flash radiation would have been zero.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the United States compensation scheme. What he knows, but has failed to tell the House, is that the scheme works where people are present at a detonation and within 20 miles of it. As he will know, the vast majority of people on Christmas island were 34 kms away and so would not have been eligible for compensation under the American scheme if it had been operating. Similarly, it would be absurd to contend that participants who were upwind of the tests could have been exposed to radioactive fallout. As a result, there would have been no necessity to issue them with film badges.

The programme also alleges that the Grapple Y test went wrong. If that is the case, it follows that those responsible for the conduct of the tests either deliberately connived in a massive deception or that they unknowingly did not correctly interpret the manifestations at the time and were thus guilty of negligence or professional incompetence. The records show that the Grapple Y test was detonated at a height of 8,000 ft at the intended diagonal distance of 2.5 km from the point of bomb release to the detonation point, corresponding to a distance of 1.7 km from the south-east point of Christmas island.

I am mystified by the allegations in the "Dispatches" programme that the official detonation distance from Christmas island was meant to be 5 miles or 8 km. There are no official records to support this. In terms of exposure of participants, of course, it would have made no difference if the weapon had been detonated at 8 km or zero km from the south-east point of the island. Doses at the nearest mustering point would still have been zero.

The main evidence in the television programme to support the allegation that the bomb detonated at 800 ft is the statement made by Captain Stewart, who was a co-pilot of a Shackelton flying on a shipping patrol some 60 miles away, as he said himself, at the time of detonation. At such a distance much of the evidence on which to base an eyeball estimation is below the horizon and he could not have seen the point of detonation. If the detonation had occurred at 800 ft, large amounts of water would have been sucked into the cloud giving rise to massive fallout over parts of the island. If test veterans had been exposed to that fallout, as the programme implied, severe symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and beta burns would have been manifested within hours of the detonation among all participants, with deaths from radiation sickness some weeks later. No such symptoms were observed. Furthermore, the radiation from that fallout would have been impossible to hide since it would have been apparent in the fallout pattern over the entire world.

The "Dispatches" programme alleges that there was heavy rain off Christmas island on 28 April 1958 which substantially increased the amount of radioactive fallout. All that I can say to the right hon. Gentleman is that, shortly after the test, extensive environmental monitoring did not measure any deposition of radioactive materials from the detonation. On the basis of that evidence, therefore, there could have been no exposure to internal contamination as a result of inhalation, as suggested by the right hon. Gentleman. I confirm that sea water from swimming areas, drinking water, fish and locally gathered foods, such as coconuts, were continuously sampled and no traces of radioactive contamination were found.

The programme further alleges that the instruments used to measure radiation during the Grapple megaton nuclear bomb tests were not capable of measuring beta radiation. Of course, that allegation is totally without foundation since the instruments used on the nuclear weapon tests were of the beta/gamma type, capable of measuring both types of radiation.

The right hon. Gentleman asked what criteria were used to designate areas of Christmas island safe or not safe. Any area or task in which it was expected that there might be radiation doses that were not trivial, or where pessimistically there might, however unlikely, be a possibility of exposure to radiation that was not trivial, was identified and entry to it stringently controlled. All persons entering such areas, or who might have to undertake tasks with radiation or radioactive substances, were issued with personal film badges. Additionally, the levels of radiation throughout the island were known and, in places occupied by the participants, the levels did not differ from the ever-present background and were considerably less than would have been experienced in the course of living in the United Kingdom.

There are many factual errors in the New Zealand study entitled "Mortality and Cancer Incidence in New Zealand Participants in United Kingdom Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Pacific". Those errors were pointed out to the New Zealand authorities before publication, but were not amended in the final report. As an example, the authors assumed that the average dose to which Royal New Zealand navy personnel were exposed to be identical to that received by Royal Navy personnel—taken to be 5.2 mSv. In fact, the duties of the respective navies were quite different. The closest that the New Zealand ships ever approached ground zero at the time of any of the detonations was 40 km upwind and their dose was, therefore, not significantly different from zero.

A further factual error is the statement in the New Zealand report that there could have been significant external exposure to neutron doses". It is irrefutable that neutron doses at a distance of 40 km from ground zero at the time of detonation were zero. Indeed, the total dose from all sources of radiation, neutron and gamma, was trivial at a distance 7.5 km from ground zero, and the neutron dose would have been a small fraction of this. But if any nuclear test participant had been close enough to receive a measurable neutron dose he would have been killed instantly by accompanying blast and thermal effects.

It is a salutary lesson on the vagaries of statistics that, despite exposure levels to radiation from the tests being zero, an increased incidence of leukaemia compared with the average of New Zealand is still documented in the report. I should also point out to the right hon. Gentleman that the New Zealand report found no increased incidence of multiple myeloma.

The right hon. Gentleman asks if I will place in the Library a copy of an unpublished paper by Dr. Headley Marston on the fallout of strontium 90 from nuclear explosions. I regret that, despite searches initiated by the Department of Primary Industries and Energy in Australia, for which I am grateful, the document has not yet been traced.

The motion having been made at Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Ten o'clock.