Atom bomb veterans decision due

UK-MORE than 1,000 atom bomb test veterans claiming hundreds of millions in compensation from the Ministry of Defence will discover the fate of a government bid to derail their claims on Friday.

A widow from north Hampshire, whose husband died from "unusual cancers", is among those taking part in the High Court battle against the MoD.

Edna Ellis’s husband Stuart was a scientist aboard HMS Diana, which travelled to the South Pacific in 1956 to monitor atomic testing.

Despite leading a healthy lifestyle, he died in 1989 at the age of 63, with a consultant surgeon describing his cancer as the "the most unusual presentation" he had ever encountered.

 Hydrogen bomb

Naval veteran Roger Atkins, from Frimley, is also involved in the court battle. The 70-year-old, who watched Britain explode one of its first hydrogen bombs, has been fighting cancer for 14 years.

The ex-servicemen, their widows and families claim the men were made ill by radiation exposure following nuclear tests in the Pacific and mainland Australia in the 1950s.

The claims, if successful, could potentially cost the MoD hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation payments for a wide range of health problems.

Earlier this year, the government launched a legal bid to halt the claims before they even got off the ground, arguing that they were made too late to go ahead.

On Friday, High Court Judge Mr Justice Foskett will give his judgment, which will decide whether the men’s claims can go to a full trial.

Douglas Hern, litigation secretary for the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, said the claimants were hopeful of a positive outcome.

Too late

During a 15-day hearing in January and February, MoD barrister Charles Gibson QC argued that, even if it was deemed that they should go ahead at such a late date, the men’s claims had "no reasonable prospect of success".

They had been made in a "vacuum of evidence" and were an "attack" on the veterans and scientists who organised the tests and were there at the time, he said.

For the veterans, Benjamin Browne QC, said recent research made a clear link between radiation exposure and illnesses suffered and it was only when that became available that the claims could have gone ahead