Nuclear test veterans win court battle

28 July 2011 Last updated at 10:59 ET

Nuclear testing was carried out on Christmas Island in the South Pacific

Veterans involved in Britain’s nuclear weapons tests between 1952 and 1958 have been granted leave to appeal in their fight for compensation.

More than 1,000 ex-servicemen say exposure to radiation has led to ill health, such as cancer.

The Supreme Court has now overturned an Appeal Court ruling that nine out of 10 “lead” cases had been brought too late to be heard.

The Ministry of Defence maintains no “causal” link can be proved.

Lawyers for the 1,011 veterans asked the Supreme Court for permission to be allowed to argue their right to seek damages.

The judges agreed and the Supreme Court will hear their case later this year.

If the Supreme Court then rules that their claims can go ahead, a hearing for damages would take place in the High Court.

A lawyer for some of the veterans, James Dingemans QC, told the Supreme Court judges that the ruling by the Appeal Court preventing the case from going ahead had been “unfair”.

“To have driven these people [out] without a hearing, without even cross-examination… is, we submit, wrong,” he said.

Lawyers for the MoD maintained the cases had been brought too late and said the veterans would not be able to “show any causation” if they did proceed.

‘No protection’

Veterans have been battling since 2004 for recompense and a recognition of their claim that their poor health was caused by radiation exposure.

Chronic health problems cited by them include cancers, skin defects, fertility problems and birth defects in their children.

The UK carried out a series of nuclear weapons tests in mainland Australia, the Montebello islands off the west Australian coast and on Christmas Island, in the Pacific, in the 1950s.

Those tests were conducted against a backdrop of decolonisation and the growing Cold War threat, with the UK desperate to establish and show itself as a nuclear power.

Ken McGinley, a veteran from Johnstone, Renfrewshire, told the BBC: “On Christmas Island I witnessed five bomb tests. Basically we had no protection and warnings at all.

“All we were told to do was to stand and look at the bomb [and] cover our eyes up in case we got blinded by the flash.”

In June 2009, the High Court gave the current group of veterans the right to sue the Ministry of Defence.

Veterans who served in the Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force – as well as personnel from New Zealand and Fiji – were all exposed to radiation.

In 1998, research from Durham University suggested that one in three servicemen exposed to the tests died from bone cancers or leukaemia linked to the atomic and hydrogen bomb tests.

Last year the appeal judges said nine test cases had been launched outside the legal time limit and so stopped them from proceeding.

The one case that was allowed to go ahead related to a man, Bert Sinfield, who had already died.

BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt says the nuclear veterans are dying at a rate of around three every month but those who remain say they are determined to continue their court battle.

Lawyers say several of the other veterans involved in the current Supreme Court action have now died.

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