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Gulf veteran found out about pesticides before ministers

The Times 12 December 1996

BY MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT

OFFICIALS at the Ministry of Defence knew the full extent of the use of organophosphate pesticides in the Gulf at least two months before ministers were told, the Commons Defence Committee learnt yesterday.

They even informed a Gulf War veteran in writing that "the full picture" had not been given by the ministry, in a letter dated four weeks before Nicholas Soames, the Armed Forces Minister, made an emergency statement to the Commons correcting previous parliamentary answers that organophosphate pesticides had been used on a limited scale only.

Bernard Doyle, a craftsman with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers attached to 7th Armoured Brigade during the Gulf War, received a letter on August 27 from Lieutenant-Colonel John Graham of the Defence Medical Services Directorate, outlining the wide use of the potentially dangerous pesticides. The information was contained in an MoD briefing note No 3, dated July 19, 1996. The document was waved at MoD officials by Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat member of the defence committee, when they were questioned yesterday.

Mr Campbell said: "It is a disgrace that a letter is sent to a member of the public in which he is given relevant and significant information on a matter of the utmost controversy and the utmost interest to Parliament and that that information is not given to ministers until a month later."

Mr Doyle, 33, from North Wales, left the Army in 1993 and is now "unemployable", suffering from chest problems and a muscle-wasting neurological disease. Yesterday his wife, Sylvia, said her husband had described his symptoms to the Organophosphate Network and was told that he had "OP poisoning". She said: "He is now on a 60 per cent war pension and extremely ill. It seems extraordinary that by badgering the ministry, he eventually found out what he needed to know, yet ministers were apparently kept in the dark."

The committee was also told that three weeks before Mr Doyle received the letter, Group Captain Bill Coker, the consultant physician who headed the Gulf medical assessment team until last month, told the War Pensions Agency that no organophosphates was sprayed. Group Captain Coker told the MPs that he knew pesticides had been used because a number of the servicemen he had seen had mentioned it, but he was not aware they were organophosphates.

Mr Doyle said yesterday: "I had been pestering the MoD for a long time and then suddenly the evidence I had been after landed on my doorstep. I don't think the MoD realised the significance of what it had sent me."

The MPs also learnt that military reports giving details about the use of locally supplied pesticides, containing high dosages of diazinon, a dangerous substance, were available in March 1991. Fifty-four Gulf War veterans are now being re-examined for possible pesticide poisoning.

A full investigation headed by Richard Mottram, the ministry's permanent secretary, is expected to be completed by February.