Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been urged to seek an audience with King Charles to ask him to award a medal to Britain’s nuclear test veterans.
The Mirror reported yesterday that a Cabinet Office source had confirmed a medal committee had ruled against a gong for the atomic heroes, despite promises of the last 3 Prime Ministers that they all supported one.
Veterans are now waiting to see if the decision is going to be overruled.
Salford MP Rebecca Long-Bailey told Parliament the medal rules “state clearly that the Prime Minister can personally make a direct recommendation to the sovereign on a medal issue”.
She asked: “Is he now going to recommend that these servicemen finally receive the medal they deserve?”
Junior defence minister Andrew Murrison, a former navy doctor, said: “She really ought not to read everything she sees in the pages of the Daily Mirror.”
He added: “The case is being considered though the well established process for reviewing historic medal cases, and the outcome will be announced in due course.”
Shadow Veterans Minister Rachel Hopkins asked him to commit to a clear timetable for medallic recognition for the test veterans, and a review of the committee’s processes.
Labour announced yesterday that when in power they would reconsider the medals process rules, because it overlooked "strong cases" such as that of the nuclear veterans, as well as modern veterans like those of Operation Pitting, the evacuation from Afghanistan last year.
That decision was only overturned after political pressure, with a Pitting clasp added to the existing Afghanistan medal.
But Murrison replied: “She’s fallen into the same trap as her honourable friend… she really mustn’t take what she reads in the press at face value. She mustn’t confuse commemorative coins and medallions with medals.”
Murrison was accused by campaigners of being "patronising" and "ignorant" in his responses.
Last week, after the Mirror reported how Defence Secretary Ben Wallace's had told Parliament that he would not attend the Plutonium Jubilee commemoration later this month, the Ministry of Defence announced he would attend after all.
