I have been so impressed with the support given by this newspaper to the campaign for justice for our nuclear test veterans.
Of all the many injustices we have seen in this country – from Grenfell to Hillsborough, infected blood and Bloody Sunday – this is the longest-standing and, arguably, the worst.
Given this is the 70th anniversary year of the first test, you can forgive some of those affected for feeling totally abandoned by the country they so loyally served overseas.
But there may be a glimmer of hope.
Last week’s call by the Chair of the Infected Blood Inquiry for urgent compensation is something many victims thought they’d never see.
And given the strong parallel with nuclear tests – with thousands of people knowingly harmed by gross negligence of the powers-that-be – it raises hopes of a breakthrough for the veterans too.
Just as with infected blood, the veterans have had their medical records withheld. In my final speech to Parliament, I called the blood scandal a “criminal cover-up on an industrial scale”. Exactly the same label can be applied to the treatment of nuclear test veterans.
What all of these scandals show is that it is too hard for ordinary people to fight the secrecy of the British state. Just as we need root-and-branch political reform to make this country work better, so we also need major legal reform to level up the scales of justice.
That is what a Hillsborough Law is all about. Public servants should be under a legal duty to tell the truth at the first time of asking. Never again should people harmed through no fault of their own – be it through nuclear tests and infected blood – be left in the wilderness for decades.
So I say this to whoever is our new PM: commit now to righting these wrongs and to a Hillsborough Law. You would be applauded by all for doing so and starting to bring some of the change our country desperately needs.
