Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Coaker on 4 August (HL 9670), how many nuclear rest veterans have applied for no-fault compensation under the War Pension Scheme; how many have been granted compensation; and how many have died before their applications were considered.

The War Pensions Computer System currently lacks the capability to uniquely identify individuals who participated in nuclear tests. While the claim file might contain a copy of the Nuclear Test Veterans Priority Claim Request or other relevant information indicating the claimant's involvement in nuclear testing, this information is not consistently available.

To accurately determine the number of Nuclear Test Veterans who applied for or received compensation, or those who passed away before their application was reviewed, would require a manual interrogation of all War Pension files and could only be provided at a disproportionate cost.

Statistics on the War Pensions Scheme are published by the Ministry of Defence at the following link:

www.gov.uk/government/collections/war-pension-recipients-index