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."