It’s tempting just to criticise the political and economic chaos imposed by the most inept UK Government in living memory.

For example, the Tories have had four Chancellors of the Exchequer in 101 days, compared to the SNP Government’s three Finance Secretaries since May 2007.

Indeed, by the time you read this Prime Minister Truss may be gone.

However, there are other important, often forgotten issues.

2022 marks the 70th anniversary of Operation Hurricane, Britain’s first atomic test in the Montebello archipelago off Western Australia.

From 1952 to 1991, 40,000 service personnel were exposed to 45 nuclear weapons tests and 593 so-called radioactive trials in Australia, US and South Pacific.

Young men were ordered to sit on a beach, backs turned to the blast and eyes covered with their hands.

Lightly dressed due to the tropical sun and with no personal protective equipment, test veterans reported seeing their bones appear like an X-ray negative as a flash of light and giant mushroom cloud formed in the sky.

Servicemen subsequently suffered the after-effects of radiation exposure and sickness.

Many developed cancer, their wives miscarried repeatedly and children were born with physical and learning abnormalities. The mental health and wellbeing impact on such families as a result is incalculable.

In 1958, Ken McGinley from Johnstone was sent aged 19 to Christmas Island and exposed to five nuclear tests, including the UK’s biggest-ever bomb.

Like many other test veterans, he became sterile and developed a rare blood cancer and subsequently lung cancer.

It’s scandalous that successive UK Governments time after time refused to pay compensation to veterans like Mr McGinley who suffered as a result of nuclear tests. UK Ministers even resisted awarding veterans a service medal.

In 1983 Ken McGinley founded the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association to gain recognition and restitution for British personnel and scientists who participated in nuclear tests and clean-ups.

On the morning Russia invaded Ukraine, the UK Health Security Agency finally published a mortality and cancer incidence study among 21,357 servicemen who participated in UK nuclear tests.

It found that veterans were 3.77 times more likely to die from chronic myeloid leukaemia, a bone cancer the report says is “radiation-inducible.”

For example, half the crew of the destroyer HMS Diana, ordered to twice sail through the fallout plume following Operation Mosaic in 1956, died from tumours.

Research only confirms what nuclear veterans long knew.

Sadly, most have since died without ever being given the respect owed to them by UK Governments that spent millions on lawyers to deny them the compensation that France, Australia, US and even Russia provided their veterans.

Appallingly, Britain has virtually ignored or denied the damage it inflicted on so many young men within many of our own lifetimes.

We owe a great deal to service personnel who risk life, limb and mental health to keep us safe.

Compensation, an apology and a full public inquiry into the injustices our test veterans and their families suffered is the very least the UK Government should commit to without delay.