The Government has sensationally announced the imminent release of 4,000 pages of top secret documents expected to blow the lid off the nuked blood scandal.
The mass data dump comes seven months after the Mirror revealed the existence of records at the Atomic Weapons Establishment about blood and urine testing of troops during the Cold War, and just two weeks after veterans served legal papers on the Ministry of Defence.
The 150 documents are among more than 28,000 held on a top-secret database at the AWE, which had classified each of them as a risk to national security and locked them from public view indefinitely.
Defence minister Andrew Murrison had to battle for four months before he was allowed to see them, with officials watching over his shoulder, and has now decided they should be published in full.
Campaigner Alan Owen said: "This is like finding the Post Office tapes, or the faked police reports at Hillsborough. Five minutes ago they were among our most vital state secrets, and now a minister has ordered them opened after just one glance.
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"He must have seen the contents were politically radioactive, and it gave him no option but to release them to avoid being contaminated in the longest-running scandal in British history."
Around 22,000 troops served at a dozen nuclear bombs tests and nearly 600 radiation experiments in Australia and the Pacific between 1952 and 1967, and later reported a legacy of blood disorders, rare medical conditions, miscarriages for their wives and birth defects in their children.
If blood tests exist from that period, it would finally prove beyond all doubt whether radiation entered their bodies and caused their catalogue of health problems, potentially leading to thousands of compensation claims worth millions of pounds.
A picture shown to Parliament in 2002 by Tamworth MP Brian Jenkins shows four crew from the Fleet Air Arm aboard HMS Warrior during Operation Grapple at Malden Island in the Pacific, in May 1957. Three of them went on to develop radiogenic conditions, including cancersLawyer Jason McCue, who is leading the veterans' legal claim to access their missing medical records, said: "Piecemeal disclosure will come at huge cost to the taxpayer, and the veterans do not have time to waste. It is far better they agree to the veterans' suggestion of a fast-track public inquiry to get to the truth as quickly and economically as possible."
The MoD response to the claim is due on Tuesday (Apr 9). The papers are expected to be released in Parliament at the end of April. A Lords debate, led by former Labour deputy Tom Watson, is scheduled for May 2.
In 2018 when the Mirror first uncovered instructions for blood tests, the MoD insisted it had "no information" about them. In 2022, we revealed a memo about Squadron Leader Terry Gledhill and the "gross irregularity" in blood tests taken over more than a year when he served at Operation Grapple, a series of hydrogen bombs detonated over Christmas Island, through which he flew sampling missions.
That led to the discovery of orders from the Air Ministry, Admiralty, and War Office for troops of all three forces to be subject to the same tests, over a decade, at multiple tests and locations. The Ministry of Justice confirmed at least two of the files were locked as a state secret due to fears of nuclear proliferation and terrorist activity. Murrison had previously insisted there was nothing of interest in the files, while admitting they were "tantalising".
Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer told Parliament in November: "Some records were taken, some weren't, there is not a cover-up policy here to discriminate against this cohort. It simply doesn't exist. What would be the reason to cover this up rather than look after these people?" Yet efforts by veterans and families to obtain the blood tests have been met with refusals, and in some cases medical records filleted of all information relating to their service at the nuclear weapons trials.
The Mirror showed the Gledhill memo to Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister in 2022, when he agreed the cover-up of medical records could lead to criminal charges. Rishi Sunak has snubbed requests to meet the veterans to discuss the missing papers 13 times since he took office.
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