Unite has accused the Ministry of Defence of hiding behind ‘commercial interests’ in refusing to provide information about the asbestos scandal involving the maintenance of its Sea King helicopter fleet.

Unite say it has been campaigning for the past year for the Ministry of Defence to contact the estimated 1,000 workers who undertook maintenance on Sea King helicopters since 1969.

This follows the discovery that many of the components in the helicopter contained asbestos. Some of those components remained part of the aircraft even after a modification programme in 2006. According the the union:

“In February Unite national officer Jim Kennedy wrote to the MoD seeking information on what the MoD was doing to contact the workers and strongly urging the ministry to do more. Despite the request not being made under Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, the MoD decided to treat it as an FoI.

The MoD then delayed answering Unite’s letter citing its concern that in doing so it would potentially affect ‘commercial interests’ and therefore it may not disclose the information, under legal exemptions contained in the FoI Act. The MoD will now not reply before the end of the month, two months after the questions were first asked.”

Unite national officer Jim Kennedy said:

“This is an absolute scandal. Not only has the MoD allowed workers to be exposed to asbestos for nearly 50 years, it is now trying to cover up their failings, citing ‘commercial interests’. The MoD is more interested in covering up its failings then ensuring that workers who may have been exposed to asbestos are notified about their contamination.

Workers could have been handed a death sentence by the MoD and it is not even prepared to warn them of what has occurred. It is simply not credible to believe that the MoD does not have records of the workers who operated on military bases.”

Unite has called on the MoD to introduce a three point plan: