§ Mr. DalyellTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the letter from the Minister of State for the Armed Forces to the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) of 27 January 2000, concerning Gulf veterans, for what reasons he has been unable to obtain adequate material from Canada on depleted uranium testing work; and what further steps he plans to take to obtain adequate material. [110071]
§ Mr. Spellar[holding answer 14 February 2000]: The MOD has repeatedly stated that we are keen to see the evidence from the independent tests carried out in Canada and the US that claim UK veterans were exposed to unusually high levels of DU during the Gulf conflict. We have urged all the scientists involved in testing UK veterans to share their full results with us and the scientific community. We have also repeated our request for details of the work during meetings with, and when writing to, 483W Dr. Durakovic, Dr. Sharma and veterans' representatives. Yet in spite of our requests we have still not seen any robust scientific data justifying the claims.
The MOD will continue to make requests for robust scientific evidence to support the claims and urges all those involved in these independent tests to make the positive step to provide the evidence so that we can move forward on a scientific basis. In the meantime, we have offered to test the UK veterans who were involved with these independent tests. A draft protocol, under which the testing would take place, is currently being considered by veterans' representatives. We hope that they will soon agree to co-operate in such testing.