Liz Truss has been accused of playing “cruel, political games” with Britain’s nuclear veterans.
After a four-year Mirror campaign, it is believed a decision on a gong for the survivors of Cold War radiation experiments has now been made - but is being withheld from them, perhaps to avoid adding to her bad headlines.
Truss had promised to support their fight, and consider war pension reform, when she entered No10.
But she allowed the 70-year anniversary of the first test to pass with little fanfare, has ignored requests to meet veterans, and there is no expected date for an announcement to be made on formal honours.
Ex-veterans minister Johnny Mercer said: "The test veterans have been fighting for recognition for 70 years and for them to have to wait a second longer is simply unconscionable. They are in their 80s, and they are rightly losing patience.
"We know that previous decisions that went against them were held back, for months, as part of a Whitehall media strategy. These men delivered our nuclear deterrent, and they do not deserve to be used as pawns in cruel, political games.”
Last month he teamed up with Labour colleague Dan Jarvis to warn Truss that failure to honour these men would amount to a betrayal of nuclear veterans and their families - thought to be more than 150,000 people.
Around 22,000 men took part in 45 bomb tests, and 593 radioactive experiments, in America, Australia and the South Pacific between 1952 and 1991. Around 1,500 survive, with a high rate of birth defects in their children and grandchildren.
After the Mirror took campaigners to meet Boris Johnson in June, he promised £500,000 funding for a Plutonium Jubilee and said they deserved a medal. During their race to replace him, Truss and her rival Rishi Sunak both backed it.
On Johnson’s orders, and with support from Mercer as a minister, the military medals sub-committee met and discussed the medal in August, making a recommendation to the main honours committee.
But after Truss took office, she fired Mercer and the honours committee chairman. When a new chairman was found in September, the committee met again and should have made a decision, but still no announcement has been made.
Mercer said: "Politicians have promised these men and their families a fair hearing, and this Prime Minister promised her support for both a medal, and war pension reform. She should order the committee to reveal the decision we believe it has made, and she must sit down with the nuclear veterans, look them in the eye, and deliver on that support.”
Two years ago, the same committees ruled against a medal on the grounds there was not enough “risk and rigour” to taking part in nuclear weapons tests. The latest medal application uses as evidence the government's own study, published earlier this year, which found servicemen at the tests were more likely to die, and to die from cancer, than others who had served in the armed forces.
Emails obtained by the Mirror showed that the medal committee had made its decision after a meeting in February 2020, but Ministry of Defence officials delayed the announcement until December, when they could “secure a slot on the government grid for the results of the reviews to be released”.
Officials also fed the committee false information. Follow-up FOI requests for the same communications relating to the latest decision, sought by the Mirror, have again been unaccountably held back from release.
The families say a similar delay must not be allowed to happen again.
Alan Owen, founder of campaign group LABRATS and whose father died at 52 after witnessing 24 bomb tests, said: “One veteran dies every week. We cannot wait for the political turmoil to die down, and until the government thinks it’s safe to make an announcement. This is the jubilee year, they’ve already missed the anniversary, and the time is now.”
Veteran John Morris, who made history by banging his fist on Johnson’s desk to demand justice, will be marching at the Cenotaph next month. He said: “When I march past, I’ll be staring straight at the PM. We look to Liz Truss to deliver justice. This is the easiest problem on her desk. We’re not going away.”
A spokesman for the Cabinet Office said: “The work of the honours committee continues and an announcement will be made in due course.”
