British government ignores ruling on Gulf War
syndrome
LONDON : Britain's ministry of defence has decided to ignore a
court decision ordering it to recognize Gulf War syndrome, removing
the right of thousands of veterans to claim extra money, a
newspaper said.
Harcourt Concannon, the president of the commission which made the
ruling, accused the ministry of illegally "tampering" with the
process to avoid recognizing the syndrome, the Guardian
reported.
The army disputes the term "Gulf War Syndrome", an umbrella term
for a number of illnesses, some serious, which have affected
servicemen returning from Operation Desert Storm in 1991 to
liberate Kuwait from Iraqi troops.
Lawyers acting for veterans say the move will save the ministry
millions of pounds and prevent between 2,000 and 6,000 disabled
ex-servicemen receiving a supplement to their small pensions, it
said.
It will also call into question payments already being paid, it
added.
In a landmark ruling on November 1, the Pensions Appeal Tribunal
recognized for the first time that a former soldier was suffering
from Gulf War Syndrome and should receive an invalidity
pension.
The tribunal, which hears appeals from veterans who have had their
claims for war pensions rejected, found that "veterans of the Gulf
War later developed an excess of symptomatic ill health over and
above that expected in the normal course of events."
The ministry chose not to appeal against the decision to the House
of Lords.
But the Guardian said Concannon, the president of the pensions
tribunal, has learned the ministry has ignored his ruling by
changing the terms of the award to one of the men involved in the
test case, Mark McGreevy.
McGreevy is suffering from a crumbling spine which, he claims, was
caused by Gulf war syndrome. Since last year's ruling, the ministry
has concluded that his illness has nothing to do with the
condition, the newspaper said.
In an angry letter last month, Concannon told Alan Burnham, chief
executive of the Veterans Agency, the ministry "clearly and
deliberately departed from the terms of the tribunal decision in
order to substitute their own expression.
He added he believed that the ministry has "no legal authority to
tamper with the terms on which a tribunal allows an appeal."