Medical Assessment Programme: Non-Gulf Veterans (Hansard, 8 July 1998)

§ Lord Gilbert

The Ministry of Defence is not aware of any reports suggesting that some non-Gulf veterans have recently attended the MoD's Medical Assessment Programme (MAP) and been referred elsewhere within the MoD.

The Ministry of Defence is, however, aware that a short paper was published in the Royal College of Psychiatrists' psychiatric bulletin in late February which reported that, in an unspecified 12-month period, 5 of 39 ex-service personnel referred to the Defence Services Psychiatric Centre at Catterick for the treatment of combat-related post traumatic stress disorder were patients whose description of their combat experience was largely fictitious. MoD officials have contacted the paper's author and ascertained that the period covered by the paper was 1996 and that two of these subjects were referred by the MAP. We are now attempting to identify the individuals concerned in order to determine whether they are Gulf veterans or were otherwise entitled to attend the MAP.

MoD has also carried out an extensive search of case notes at the MAP in order to ascertain whether there have been any more recent instances of incorrect referral. This exercise identified a small number of patients who have been seen by the MAP since 13 October last year, when the MAP moved to its current location—St. Thomas' Hospital in London—and who were not Gulf veterans. However, none of these patients has been referred by the MAP to other MoD facilities or military establishments. All but two of these patients are servicemen of ex-servicemen who claimed they had been vaccinated for Gulf service, but did not deploy to the Gulf to participate in Operation GRANBY. It is our policy to allow individuals in this category to be examined at the MAP. The remaining individuals were referred to the MAP by their respective GPs in good faith, but it was subsequently discovered that one had never been a member of the Armed Forces whereas the other actually deployed to the Gulf later, in 1992, to participate in Operation JURAL to enforce the no-fly-zone in southern Iraq.

In order to prevent further such occurrences, the registration form for MAP patients has been updated to include service numbers and patients referred to the MAP will henceforth be checked against a database of those who served in the Gulf to confirm their eligibility to attend.