A WIDOW has criticised the Ministry of Defence after it started a legal battle to block compensation payments to nuclear test veterans.

Sheila Gray’s husband, Frank, died of cancer in 1992, 40 years after he witnessed nuclear bomb testing in the Monte Bello islands off the West Australian coast.

Mrs Gray, 72, from Billingham, near Stockton, has campaigned for years to get successive British governments to accept responsibility for the illnesses that have affected the servicemen and their families.

“My husband was never interested in winning compensation,”

she said. “All he ever wanted was somebody to accept responsibility for what happened and to say sorry.

“Frank was invalided out of the Marines two months after he took part in the testing because his hair and teeth started falling out – to me that is pretty clear evidence.

“The Government’s continual attempts to block the campaign really annoys me, they are always coming up with more and more excuses.”

Mrs Gray, who is in poor health, helped establish the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, which is fighting the High Court case.

About 1,000 veterans from all three armed services are claiming hundreds of millions of pounds in damages for injuries ranging from skin conditions to cancer.

The ministry said the Limitation Act 1980 provides a “time bar” which prevents veterans from launching claims outside a set period of time after they became aware that they had a valid claim.

Benjamin Browne, QC, speaking for the servicemen who took part in the programme in the South Pacific, said that the Government had satisfied itself as to the validity of the Rowland study of a small group of New Zealand test veterans, which proved that most, if not all of them, suffered genetic effects due to radiation exposure.

An expert at the world’s oldest and largest radiological research laboratory, in the US, who was the principal investigator for the US government in this field, said studies on the Japanese bomb survivors and others showed that exposure to radiation at the levels demonstrated by the Rowland study substantially increased the incidence of cancer and cancer mortality.

Denis Shaw, from Grosmont, near Whitby, and Tommy Wilson, from Benwell, Newcastle, are also involved in the claim.

The hearing to assess whether the claims are barred by the Limitation Act is due to last three weeks.