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AN INCOMPLETE DEFENCE

Ministers may be exonerated: their ministry is not

By the standards of internal government inquiries, terms such as "serious flaws" and "fundamental failures" are little short of sensational. The Mottram report describes how ministers received and then passed on to Members of Parliament information that was thoroughly misleading. As a result, there were consistent denials that troops serving in the Gulf War had significant exposure to organophosphate chemicals. In fact some units were saturated with them. Although there is still no established link between these substances and so-called Gulf War syndrome, the suspicions held by many of those affected are not surprising.

The affair probably had its roots in poor communication between civil servants and soldiers in the field. That might have been understandable, if not excusable, in conflict conditions. But it went far beyond that. The signs that proper procedure had not been followed were swift in arriving. Within months of the Allied victory the Pentagon publicly acknowledged to the US Congress that American soldiers had acquired and used substantial quantities of pesticides from Saudi Arabian sources.

Despite that, only in 1995 apparently, did Ministry of Defence staff receive indications that British forces might have done the same. That information was not properly assessed nor made available to ministers. By 1996, those same people knew that inappropriate material had definately been deployed in vast amounts and then still did not bring the matter to their superiors. All this occurred despite mounting evidence produced to the contrary by MPs, the media, many pressure groups, solicitors for the afflicted, and parts of the ministry itself.

This has been a disgraceful episode. The behaviour of the culpable individuals makes their continued employment at the MoD quite impossible. It does not, though, constitute a "classic political cover-up" or imply that MoD officials were being used as "fall guys" in the manner suggested by the Shadow Defence Secretary, David Clark. Furthermore, despite demands to the contrary, it would have been unfair and unreasonable to name the individuals concerned at this stage of proceedings.

The absence of political conspiracy hardly means that the matter can be dismissed as poor bureaucratic practice. The failure to notify ministers and Parliament, is not all that went wrong here. If it was, then the salutary sackings that Richard Mottram has strongly hinted at would indeed be sufficient. The chief concern should be the indifference towards, or ineptitude with, the evidence that the Armed Forces had encountered pesticides. With the, admittedly invaluable, benefit of hindsight, Nicholas Soames, the Armed Forces Minister, and his senior advisers should not have swallowed the departmental line.

Security considerations have largely protected the Ministry of Defence from radical restructuring seen elsewhere in Whitehall. They have been too long a shield from outside inspection. Procedure, as well as personnel, has been found wanting by the Mottram report. Confidence in the competence of, and connections between, the military, civil servants and ministers, has been shaken. A further and external investigation into the operations of the MoD should be undertaken before this Government or the next pronounces itself satisfied.

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