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Lord Truscott: My Lords, first I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Morris of Manchester for his magnificent work on behalf of disabled people, service veterans and the Royal British Legion.
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The Government and the Ministry of Defence have never denied that a number of British veterans from the 1990–91 Gulf War have suffered from serious illnesses as a result of their service during Operation Granby. The Minister, my noble friend Lord Bach, himself said in a letter published in the summer of 2001 that the MoD had,
The Minister for Veterans in another place, my honourable friend Ivor Caplin, wrote this December in the Times that:
"This Government has always accepted that some veterans of the 1990–91 Gulf conflict have become ill and that some of this ill-health is related to their Gulf experience".
Acknowledged health issues, recognised by the Government, include a variety of debilitating health problems, including chronic fatigue, muscle pain and wasting, asthma, arthritis, skin, memory and gastrointestinal problems. Obviously, the MoD and the Government have an obligation to provide medical and financial support to all those affected.
I welcome the fact that Her Majesty's Government are currently spending some £8.5 million on researching the scientific background to the illnesses suffered by the Gulf War veterans. Nevertheless, I must admit to having some severe reservations about the report of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. He has, of course, had a very distinguished legal career, but I feel obliged to raise a number of issues which I regard as flaws in the report. I regret that the noble and learned Lord is not in his place today in order to respond in person.
Despite frequent requests from Ministers, repeated in the letters set out in the appendices to the report, we are still no nearer to discovering who funded the inquiry. It is disingenuous to call upon the MoD to be more transparent when the backers of this report are unwilling to be so themselves.
Is there foreign involvement or a possible conflict of interest? I understand that the report cost around £60,000 to produce. Your Lordships deserve to know the facts if we are to give this report due weight. I wonder whether in due course my noble friend Lord Morris of Manchester could shed light on these points. I also believe that the report plays fast and loose with some of the facts.
Lord Morris of Manchester: My Lords, I am obliged to my noble friend and I rise to respond to his question. I understand that the final cost of the Lloyd inquiry was less than £60,000 compared with the £1.68 million spent on the Hutton inquiry, and the £130 million on the Savile inquiry into the Bloody Sunday shootings. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, received no money from either side of the controversy, indeed no money from anyone for the arduous work he performed.
I recommend that my noble friend should look urgently—before the end of the debate, if possible—at paragraph 3 of the report of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. He will see there a very clear statement.
Lord Truscott: My Lords, I am obliged to my noble friend for that response, and of course I am not
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impugning in any way the integrity of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. I simply want to say that I would be grateful if the actual funders were named. They are not named in the report, although reference is made to a charitable trust and a couple of donations.
I return to the text of the report, which repeatedly refers to 6,000 veterans suffering from ill health due to their service in the first Gulf War. But, as the MoD makes clear, many of those thousands of claims for disablements and illnesses are unrelated to service in the Gulf War.
The number of Gulf veterans in receipt of pensions or gratuities for unspecified, symptomatic Gulf-related illnesses is approximately 1,400, less than 3 per cent of the personnel who served in the Gulf War. Only some 100 claimants have failed to receive an award for Gulf-related illnesses, not the 272 stated in the report. Of the latter, more than half related to diagnosed disorders such as traumatic physical injuries, lower back pain or coronary disease. The Minister for Veterans has already pledged to review the rejected cases linked to Gulf illnesses.
Of the 53,500 personnel who served in the first Gulf War, only 35 veterans, or a sample of 0.06 per cent, provided evidence to the tribunal presided over by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. Surprisingly, the report ignores the fact that mortality from all causes among the Gulf veterans (663) is consistent with the comparable group of service personnel with the same age and gender profile who did not deploy to the Gulf (675) and is significantly lower than would be found in the UK's general population (1,032).
The report provides no new evidence to support its claims and fails to appreciate that research and three scientific surveys, both in the UK and the US, have failed to implicate multiple vaccines, neurotoxins or depleted uranium as a cause of ill-health among Gulf veterans.
It recognises that some veterans are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The report's argument to recognise Gulf War illnesses as "Gulf War Syndrome" is, to my mind, puzzling. It quotes a definition of a "syndrome", which appears unique—a point mentioned by my noble friend Lord Morris—as,
"A collection of symptoms and signs which tend to occur together, and form a characteristic pattern, which may not necessarily always be due to the same pathological cause".
The Oxford Concise English Dictionary defines a "syndrome" as,
Which disease is the one that has been identified?
The British Medical Association's Complete Family Health Encyclopaedia—which I confess to having on my bookshelf—defines a "syndrome" as,
The contention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, that the MoD should simply adopt a term which the veterans prefer, even if it makes no sense and lacks any precision, seems extraordinary. The report states that,
but I think people prefer to have the right name and diagnosis.
Perhaps I may quote a few medical and scientific experts. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published its study of 40,000 former Gulf soldiers last July—a trifle more than the 35 who participated in the report before us—and concluded that the soldiers were more likely to report symptoms, but that similar symptoms were reported by both those who served in the Gulf and those who did not. The pattern of both groups was thus the same, suggesting that the former group was not exposed to a range of influences significantly different from the latter.
As Major-General Craig wrote in the Times on 24 November, not only have many Gulf War veterans secured awards for musculoskeletal injuries sustained on duty, but a possible explanation for the growth in symptom complaints may be due to increased self-reporting. The report is therefore just plain wrong to suggest that Gulf War veterans were twice as likely to suffer from ill-health than if they had been deployed elsewhere.
As to depleted uranium, Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the Royal Society working group on DU munitions, said that the exposure would have been "too low" in the Gulf to cause serious health problems. And Professor Mark Peakman, from Guy's, King's and St Thomas's School of Medicine, who has carried out research on the effect of vaccines, said that he did not believe the multiple vaccines administered were to blame either. However, he has admitted that the theory that vaccines and chemicals interacted in some way "still lurks".
A case also exists for further research into the use of organophosphorus pesticides during the Gulf conflict.
It would not, to my mind, be fair to give ex gratia payments to all Gulf veterans while ignoring those who have served and suffered in other conflicts.
Regrettably, I think the noble and learned Lord's report has even muddied the waters and confused vital issues. There is no simple ready answer to the illnesses and suffering of those brave men and women who served this country during the Gulf War. But I hope that the Ministry of Defence and the Government will never forget their solemn obligation to support the
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Gulf War veterans and their families and will continue to investigate thoroughly the causes of any illnesses resulting from their remarkable service to the people of the United Kingdom.
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