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Supplementary Estimates and New Estimates, 2009-10
That, for the year ending with 31 March 2010-
(1) further resources, not exceeding £6,617,232,000, be authorised for use for defence and civil services as set out in HC 18 and 24,
(2) a further sum, not exceeding £23,998,577,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, to meet the costs of defence and civil services as so set out, and
(3) limits as set out in HC 24 be set on appropriations in aid.- (Lyn Brown.)
Estimates, 2010-11 (Vote on Account)
That, for the year ending with 31 March 2011-
(1) resources, not exceeding £191,087,107,000, be authorised, on account, for use for defence and civil services as set out in HC 14, HC 19, HC 21, HC 25, HC 27 and HC 33, and
(2) a sum, not exceeding £190,506,334,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, to meet the costs of defence and civil services as so set out.- (Lyn Brown.)
Ordered, That a Bill be brought in upon the foregoing Resolutions;
That the Chairman of Ways and Means, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Liam Byrne, Mr. Stephen Timms, Sarah McCarthy-Fry and Ian Pearson introduce the Bill.
Presentation and First Reading
Mr. Stephen Timms accordingly presented a Bill to authorise the use of resources for the service of the years ending with 31 March 2010 and 31 March 2011 and to apply certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund to the service of the years ending with 31 March 2010 and 31 March 2011.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Monday 14 December , and to be printed (Bill 12 ) .
Business without Debate
Regional Select Committee (London)
That Ms Karen Buck, Jeremy Corbyn, Clive Efford, Siobhain McDonagh, Mr Andy Slaughter and Mr Andrew Pelling be members of the London Regional Select Committee.- (Lyn Brown.)
Sittings of the House
That-
(1) Standing Order No. 14 (Arrangement of public business) shall have effect for this Session with the following modifications, namely:
In paragraph (4) the word 'eight' shall be substituted for the word 'thirteen' in line 42 and in paragraph (5) the word 'fifth' shall be substituted for the word 'eighth' in line 44;
(2) Standing Order No. 90 (Second reading committees) shall have effect for this Session with the following modification, namely:
In paragraph (2) the word 'fifth' shall be substituted for the word 'eighth' in line 21; and
(3) Private Members' Bills shall have precedence over Government business on 29 January; 5 and 26 February; 5 and 12 March; 23 and 30 April; and 7 May.- (Lyn Brown.)
Petitions
Badman Report (Poole)
6.3 pm
Mr. Robert Syms (Poole) (Con): The petition is presented on behalf of very concerned parents who electively home educate their children and who are concerned about the Badman report and its implications for their undertaking of that education. I do not intend to read out the petition, as many similar petitions were presented earlier in the week, but it joins a long line that will eventually lead, I hope, to the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The Petition of persons resident in the Poole parliamentary constituency,
Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration schem e and right of access to people' s homes for local authority officials; further declares that the Petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.]
Badman Report (Uxbridge)
6.4 pm
Mr. John Randall (Uxbridge) (Con): I would like to present a petition on behalf of my constituents in Uxbridge that is in the same vein as that presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) and all those that were presented earlier in the week.
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The Petition of persons resident in the Uxbridge parliamentary constituency,
Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration schem e and right of access to people' s homes for local authority officials; further declares that the Petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.]
Badman Report (Blaby)
6.4 pm
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby) (Con): I beg to ask leave to present a petition on behalf of 28 petitioners in my constituency of varying ages who are similarly very concerned about the Badman report on home education. I share many of their concerns.
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The Petition of persons resident in the Blaby parliamentary constituency,
Declares that they are concerned about the recommendations of the Badman Report, which suggests closer monitoring of home educators, including a compulsory annual registration schem e and right of access to people' s homes for local authority officials; further declares that the Petitioners believe the recommendations are based on a review that was extremely rushed, failed to give due consideration to the evidence, failed to ensure that the data it collected were sufficiently robust, and failed to take proper account of the existing legislative framework.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families either not to bring forward, or to withdraw, proposed legislative measures providing for tighter registration and monitoring of children educated at home in the absence of a thorough independent inquiry into the condition and future of elective home education in England; but instead to take the steps necessary to ensure that the existing Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities are properly implemented, learning from current best practice, in all local authorities in England.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.]
British Nuclear Test Veterans
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. -(Lyn Brown.)
6.4 pm
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab): When I called for a debate on nuclear test veterans, I did so purely as a constituency MP. I wanted to highlight the case of a constituent of mine whom I have been helping for more than 11 years. I raised this case in Parliament just over seven years ago and I had hoped that the matter would have been resolved by now, but it has not.
My purpose in raising this issue is to persuade the Government finally to settle the case of the nuclear test veterans. I want them to show the same compassion, humanity and generosity that has characterised so many of their policies over the past 12 years, and to prove again their commitment to our armed forces. The families of nuclear test veterans are not convinced by that record, however. They believe that their husbands, fathers, brothers and grandfathers were expected to do something that was wrong, and something that we would not ask anyone to do now, which has badly affected their health. They also believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Government are unwilling to say sorry or to act as though they were sorry. For many years, they feel that the Government have had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards giving the veterans the recognition and recompense that they deserve.
I cannot judge whether the families are right or wrong on that. However, since news of this Adjournment debate came out, I have been contacted by lawyers acting for the families of nuclear test veterans, and they have made serious allegations about the Ministry of Defence's approach. If true, something outrageous is taking place. If false, that raises serious questions about the integrity of those lawyers. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that the MOD has been doing all that it can.
As I have said, I am raising this issue as a constituency MP, on behalf of a constituent. Shirley Denson is a remarkable woman who has suffered more than her fair share of misfortune. I first met Shirley as long ago as 1998, when she told me about the tragic life of her late husband, Squadron Leader Eric Denson. When he was just 26 years old, Flight Lieutenant Denson captained one of the three Canberra aircraft that were deployed to collect samples while flying through the mushroom cloud created by a 3 megaton nuclear detonation on 28 April 1958. It has been estimated that, while in the cloud, just 49 minutes after detonation, Flight Lieutenant Denson and his crew would each have been exposed to 13,000 rads of radiation.
Flight Lieutenant Denson was ordered to keep the plane there for six minutes. Because of a fault on one of the dosimeters, this was four minutes longer than the aircraft should have been inside the cloud. When the plane landed, the ground crew said that it was the hottest aircraft they had ever handled. Then, back on the ground, the crews would have been exposed to massive radiation fallout from the water that they drank, the fish that they caught and the food that they ate.
I understand the eventual total dosage that Flight Lieutenant Denson received could have been the equivalent of 40,000 X-rays. His vomiting started almost immediately
and became so severe that he was forced to delay his return from the Pacific and to stay on in Fiji for a further three days. He was then told that his dosage had exceeded the legal limit and was sent home. He was not allowed to take part in further tests.
Even though Flight Lieutenant Denson was in obvious ill health, there were no medical checks or a medical follow-up on his return, and nothing was done to alert him of the probable cause of his progressive medical problems. Significantly, no mention was made in his medical records of his activities in the south Pacific in 1958. Given the sensitivity surrounding the tests in a period of global conflict that it is hard for modern Britons to comprehend, there were strict orders of secrecy and he did not discuss these events with anyone. His wife did not know the details of his high dosage of ionising radiation. Even though he suffered for many years with breathing difficulties, acute sinusitis, mood swings, anxieties and depressions, she knew nothing.
In obvious medical difficulties, Squadron Leader Denson ended his own life in 1976 at the age of just 44, after 18 years of pain and upset. He was the father of four children, three of whom were born after 28 April 1958. His health problems live on in these three children, who have all also experienced lasting health problems. Twenty years passed since his death, during which Shirley Denson brought up four daughters on her own. Then, in 1997, she was alerted to the latest scientific evidence about the Christmas Island tests and started her own investigations.
Slowly, Shirley began to learn the true effect of the radiation poisoning on her husband. She has had to fight to find out more. As I have said, she is a remarkable woman. She has faced difficulties at every turn. Officials have insinuated that her late husband was sickly and unbalanced from boyhood. They suggested that his suicide was somehow inevitable and had nothing to do with Christmas Island. But she has pointed out that her husband was pronounced among the fittest of his peers and was an expert pilot. He was a proud Yorkshireman, as proud as any before him, who joined the RAF because he wanted to serve his country, and was a credit to the squadron that he would eventually lead. Mrs. Denson has gathered a great deal of expert support. Most bluntly of all, one medical officer told her, "From the moment he flew into that cloud he was a walking dead man."
Since then, a study of the genetic status of New Zealand veterans, carried out by Dr. Rowland and his team at Massey university, has shown a very high frequency of translocations in the chromosomes of veterans. Dr. Rowland has made a very convincing case that the probable cause is exposure to radiation at nuclear tests. His report was wholeheartedly endorsed by a cross-party parliamentary inquiry two years ago. As a layman, it is hard to see how someone who was at or near the nuclear tests could not have experienced radiation or ingested it through the food they ate, the water they drank or the air they breathed. It is hard to see how this could not have led to health issues later in life, or to genetic changes affecting their descendants.
I am not a scientist; I am a constituency MP. Seven years ago, I spoke in the House to ask for justice for Eric and Shirley Denson. I hoped that progress would have been made. I hoped that there would be an apology for the families of these service men, who unquestioningly
and courageously followed orders-perhaps something that said, "We would not do anything like this again, and we are sorry for the suffering it has caused."
I had also hoped that people such as Shirley Denson would have received a modest recompense. Nobody wants to bankrupt the MOD; we just want something to provide some comfort to the families and to allow them to start to draw a line under the whole affair. But here I am again, seven years on, and the opportunity that the Government had to appear magnanimous and generous seems to have passed them by.
Millions of pounds have been spent in the courts and not a penny has reached the families of those who have suffered. Ministers have repeatedly said that they want to offer veterans and their families a settlement, but years and years and years have passed by, and so have many of the veterans themselves. They have not lived to see the apology or recompense they deserve.
Currently, more than 1,000 veterans and their families from all over the Commonwealth are bringing a group action case against the Government. Earlier this week, their legal representative asked to see me to give their side of where we had got to. The lawyer told me that the Ministry of Defence had chosen to defend the claim not on the grounds of whether the detonations had caused suffering, but on the grounds that the veterans had made their claims too late. There is a limit of three years after an injury has been discovered in which a person can make a claim for personal injury, and the MOD's lawyers chose to base its defence on the case being out of time. That is called a limitation defence.
Whether such a defence is correct within the law or not, it appears to a layman to be a very mean defence. Instead of looking at the merits of people's actual claims, the MOD seems to be saying that it would not pay out because people had missed an arbitrary three-year deadline. I still do not know why anyone with an underlying desire to settle would use a defence of limitation. I simply do not get it. In public relations terms, it is a disaster. At best, it looks like a way of delaying pay-outs. At worst, it looks like a way of slithering out of taking responsibility for something for which one really is responsible.
In June this year, Mr. Justice Foskett made a judgment that largely rejected the limitation defence. His ruling is disputed but, as I understand it, he used his discretion and ordered all parties to forget about limitation and just reach a settlement. He said:
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