Written Statement of 5 November 2004

  Gulf Veterans' Illnesses
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Bach)
  My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ivor Caplin) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

  As part of the Government's commitment to investigate 1990–91 Gulf veterans' illnesses issues openly and honestly and to learn the lessons of the past, the Ministry of Defence has today published the paper The 1990–1991 Gulf Conflict Health and Personnel Related Lessons Identified. The purpose of the paper is to focus on the health and personnel-related issues
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  resulting from the First Gulf Conflict (Operation GRANBY), with the key aim of learning from the problems identified. In producing the paper, we have attempted to be as open and forthright as possible in examining the health problems experienced by serving personnel, veterans and civilians since the first Gulf conflict.

  The paper identifies what the Ministry of Defence has already done to improve procedures and assesses how these have been applied to the current Iraq deployment (Operation TELIC). It also indicates where improvements are still required. In making these assessments it has been acknowledged that during operations it is not always possible to achieve the ideal situation; inevitably, in the heat of battle there will always be some things that do not go as intended. The aim of this paper is not to seek to attribute blame but to identify how the Ministry of Defence can do better in future. I am today placing copies of the paper in the Library of the House and it is also being placed on the Ministry of Defence website at: www.mod.uk/issues/gulfwar.