Oral answer to question provided on Thursday, 22 March 2007 in the House of Lords, by Lord Drayson (Labour).

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Gulf War Illnesses

Answer

My Lords, the Ministry of Defence accepts that we could have better communicated the matters relating to the tribunal to which my noble friend refers. We accept that, but we do not accept that there has been any attempt to reinterpret the tribunal decision. The Ministry of Defence does, however, need to communicate these issues better. My honourable friend the Minister for Veterans is committed to doing that. Approximately 9,000 UK service personnel may have been within the area of possible exposure at Khamisiyah. However, the level of nerve agent to which they would have been exposed in that area was too low to have any biologically detected effect on them.