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Summer Adjournment

I will not give way, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because it would not be fair to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker—and I am your friend—or to others who wish to speak. The hon. Gentleman might also wish to intervene on the final issue that I wish to raise, which relates to the welfare of our ex-servicemen and women. I have one particular constituent, Dennis Dimond, who is a former leader of the Conservative group on Thurrock borough council and a former officer of the Essex regiment, whom I consult regularly about such matters. We are especially exercised about those people who have left our armed forces, some of them many years ago and who are now in the evening of their lives and becoming fragile. They are not getting everything that they are entitled to and I invite the Deputy Leader of the House to ask ministerial colleagues to prepare, over the parliamentary recess, a comprehensive statement of care available for ex-service personnel, perhaps through a White Paper, Green Paper or other formal statement. In that way, we could take stock of the care available for our ex-service personnel. I am especially concerned about people who are wounded or suffer trauma, or both, in the current conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places in which our armed forces are committed—sometimes, of necessity, in a secret manner. Many of us are not satisfied that when they are discharged appropriate care and facilities are available at the time or will be sustained in the long term. Trauma or mental illness can arise much later and we need reassurance that the nation’s commitment to ex-service personnel is comprehensive and that care will be ongoing. We need to understand how we as Members can assist and counsel such people, working with veterans organisations. This morning, I received a letter from a parliamentary colleague, Eddie Lowey, a member of the Legislative Council of the Isle of Man. He has no access to this place, but on behalf of his constituents he wanted me to raise the case of an Isle of Man resident who served on Christmas Island between 1958 and 1959 and was involved in the atomic tests. A further 10 residents of the Isle of Man are in the same category, as are many of our constituents who served on Christmas Island at the same time. There is growing and compelling evidence that they were adversely affected by the atomic testing. Members who are listening to me will share the view that when the Ministry of Defence says, ““Oh, it’s really not a problem and we’re monitoring it””, that is not good enough. We heard the same thing about Gulf war syndrome. I asked the Library to do some work on the subject, and my attention was drawn to a parliamentary question diligently raised by our colleague, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper), on 12 July. He asked the Ministry of Defence to comment on the EU directive Euratom 96/29. The gentleman in the Isle of Man says that the directive requires the UK to have a national register of all persons who may have been exposed to ionizing radiation in the past, especially in relation to atomic weapons experiments in the 1950s. He notes that the directive states that such people should be independently examined for genetic damage by the calculation of the number of aberrant cells shown by translocation within their chromosomes, that cytogenetic assays, such as the eBand or mFish may be carried out by molecular geneticists and that there should be ongoing screening. Many former servicemen feel that their immune systems were irreparably damaged by exposure all those years ago. In reply to our colleague, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean, the Minister said that the directive was not ““legally binding””. Well, whether it is or not there is a moral obligation and although the Minister acknowledged that the Government recognise their obligations to such veterans, he went on to make the worrying statement that they had found"““no general effect on the participants’ expectation of life nor on risk of developing most cancers, though there was a small increase in risk of some leukaemias””.—[Official Report, 12 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 1599W.]" We have heard such denials all too often in the past. It is not good enough, so I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will tell the Ministry of Defence that over the coming months Members will increasingly demand that the issues are addressed on behalf of the people who suffered as a result of those experiments in the 1950s. A remedy should be found soon, rather than having a big row in the House of Commons in the future.