Gulf War Syndrome

HC Deb 19 July 1994 vol 247 cc160-2

2. Mr. Ronnie Campbell

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will set up an independent inquiry into Gulf war syndrome.

The Minister of State for the Armed Forces (Mr. Jeremy Hanley)

I have no intention of doing so, as there remains no clinical evidence that those who served in the British armed forces in the Gulf conflict are suffering from unexplained symptoms that would call for such an inquiry.

Mr. Campbell

If the Americans have discovered that there is such a disease and are paying compensation to their armed forces, should not we be paying ours and taking a serious look at the problems facing them? Or is it the case that when there is a war, we wave the union flag and tell our lads how good they are before they go abroad to fight and call them heroes, but turn our back on them when they need our help? It is always the same with this Government and they have been 50-faced on this issue—let us pay our lads now.

Mr. Hanley

Two points need to be made in answer to that question. First, in July last year I invited anyone who believed that he was suffering from the syndrome to which the hon. Gentleman referred to come forward. In the whole of last year, 52 people came forward, of whom 27 have now seen medical examiners—their general practitioners —and 17 have been found to be suffering from recognised health conditions, none of them peculiar to their service in the Gulf. Solicitors have also put forward the names of some 300 further people, but we have not been given details about them and they have not submitted themselves to medical examination. We are, therefore, trying to do all that we can to ascertain whether their illnesses have been caused by anything that happened in the Gulf, but, at the moment, the evidence is to the contrary.

Secondly, on the American evidence, I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is taking the words of Back Benchers —be they Senators or Congressmen—and making them into a claim by the Pentagon. There is absolutely no evidence from the United States that there is a "syndrome", and there is certainly no scientific or medical evidence of chemical or biological warfare being deployed against us, on any level.

Mr. Fabricant

Is not it the case that the shells that have been accused of causing the syndrome are made of depleted heavy metals with a lower atomic number than the normal isotope? Would not anyone with an A-level or even an O-level in physics know that there is less radioactivity in such shells than in the luminous dial of an average watch?

Mr. Hanley

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that one of the possible causes of any so-called Gulf war syndrome was depleted uranium shells and that the toxicity of depleted uranium is similar to that of lead.

Rev. Martin Smyth

Does the Minister agree that there may be a case for an investigation, not necessarily into what happened to British troops in the Gulf but into pre-medication against possible poison gas attacks? Is not there something that we could learn for the future?

Mr. Hanley

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that yet another suspected cause of a possible syndrome were the injections given to our troops before they left. It has all been investigated carefully, and the Surgeon General recently wrote to the British Medical Journal to say that there was absolutely no evidence of any cause from the source to which the hon. Gentleman referred.