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Gulf War Illnesses

My Lords, it is customary to congratulate noble Lords on obtaining a debate during the dinner hour. Indeed, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, has already done so. However, with the little we have to do, with the notable exception of the Academies Bill, perhaps obtaining a debate is not now so rare an event. So in addition to congratulating the noble Lord, I want to change the metaphor and do something I have never done before in this House. On behalf of all those who are suffering from Gulf War illness, I want to thank the noble Lord, Lord Morris, for all that he has done for them over so very many years. He has been tireless in bringing their plight to notice. It was due to his persistence that the previous Government eventually apologised for the way that the Gulf War veterans had been treated. I hope of course that under the new Administration, the attitude will change still further. If they think that they need only to go on long enough taking the same line as their predecessors and that the problem will then go away—by "the problem", I mean the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Manchester—I can assure the Government that he will not go away, nor will those of us in the House tonight who support him in his noble efforts, nor will all those in the country who are also only too well aware of what he does. Like him, I am in continuing correspondence with a widow whose husband died of Gulf War illness and who is now in the process of petitioning the Government in Edinburgh. I hope that she will succeed. One might have thought that after 17 years, everything that could possibly be said on the subject would have been said, but that is not so. The first line so far taken has been that we do not yet know the causes of Gulf War illness. The second line is that, in any event, those who are suffering are getting all that they are entitled to by way of war pension. As for the first argument, we now know, for the reasons so eloquently stated by the noble Lord, Lord Morris, in his very well researched and powerful speech, that there are only two causes of Gulf War illness. One is the PB tablets; the other is the OP spray. Both are causes for which the MoD was directly responsible back in 1991. The Government and the MoD have fallen back on their second line of defence: yes, if there were causes for which we were responsible, nevertheless, we have done all that was required of us by paying the pension which has been established in all those cases. The MoD may not realise how very close it came to being sued some years ago for negligence. It escaped legal proceedings, but it is worth remembering that negligence is never easy to prove, and it was not necessary to establish negligence to show, as has been shown, that this case does not come within the ordinary run of cases. Men are now suffering from Gulf War illness which is not the ordinary perils of war, for which the pension may or may not be sufficient. The MoD was itself directly responsible, even if it could not be shown that it was negligent at the time. As they are suffering from something for which the MoD was directly responsible, it is surely now time for it to accept that something more is required. Only if the Government accept that will we reach a just end to this very sorry tale.