The MOD, Q Fever and the Compensation Culture
MOD Budgets
When people look at the Defence budget for our Armed Forces they often view it in the same way as the NHS; it is a bottomless pit where no amount of money will ever be enough to satisfy those who run it and those who are in it.
There is no doubt that Wayne Bass, a former soldier with the 2nd Battalion the Mercian Regiment, will feel utterly devastated by the ruling by Mr Justice Martin Spencer in the High Court following the dismissal of his appeal against the MOD.
Wayne Bass served in Afghanistan in Helmand Province in 2011 and fell ill after contracting a debilitating fatigue syndrome. He was diagnosed with Q fever and, sadly, discharged from the Army as a result some 3 years later.
You can follow the background to this story easily enough through the military media circles but the salient part for this article is that he took the MOD to court on the basis that they had breached their duty of care towards him by failing to give him antibiotics as a precaution to prevent illness. However, the main thrust of this Blog is the wider message relating to the issue of evidence in support a claim for compensation.
I’ve been following this case through other legal routes and from the outset I thought that his claim against the MOD would fail. Forgive my pessimistic stance, but whether you are making an application to Veterans UK under the AFCS/WPS route, or you are suing the MOD in the civil courts for negligence, your case will stand or fall on the evidence presented to the court.
There is no argument that humans can catch Q fever after breathing in dust from the faeces of infected farm animals such as sheep and cattle. During his tour in Afghanistan, Wayne Bass crawled through plenty of ditches whilst taking cover from the enemy and came into contact with animal excrement.
However, where this case failed in my opinion is that the evidence was not compelling enough to persuade the judge that the MOD had breached its duty of care to Mr Bass. The risk of Q fever was low and the NHS had said that the bacterial infection was “usually harmless, but can cause serious problems in some people.” The judge commented that there was nothing the MOD could have done to avoid exposure to Q fever other than not deploy any troops to Afghanistan. On that basis I thought that any appeal would also fail, and I was right.
The MOD had options:
- Spend money on vaccinating all the troops heading for Afghanistan even though the risk of contracting Q fever was low.
- Send the troops without vaccinating them until more medical evidence was available.
- Not send the troops to Afghanistan for fear of them contracting Q fever. Difficult decision but could you imagine the reaction to a news headline: “British Government decides not to send combat troops to Afghanistan for fear of exposure to sheep and cattle faeces?”
The Legal Argument
Wayne Bass’s legal team argued that all the troops should have been treated with an antibiotic to treat Q fever, in much the same way as an anti-malarial drug is used, but this was dismissed by the judge because there was no evidence to support the argument that it would have been an effective preventative measure.
As I said before, this case highlights the importance of having the right evidence to support a claim for compensation. We see AFCS applications declined every day by Veterans UK because applicants submit their AFCSWPS0001 without any help and fail to provide the right evidence that, on the balance of probabilities, is enough to satisfy the regulations. We’ve seen it with claims for the causes of avascular necrosis, Lyme disease, hearing loss, degenerative back conditions and most frequently with PTSD and other mental health conditions.
Remember - what might be obvious to you about your case isn’t going to be obvious to a judge. Evidence not only needs to be sound but it needs to be compelling and therefore we would encourage those who are looking to submit an AFCS or WPS claim to Veterans UK to seek professional advice. It is not really the case that ‘anyone can fill a form out’; it is a much more complicated process than that.
Wayne Bass had a good legal team and this was very much a test case for which they should be given great credit for trying. However, if the risk of catching Q fever was low, and if there was no way of avoiding exposure, and the MOD were entitled to adopt a cautious approach (waiting for more evidence about preventative antibiotics before changing the medication for 20,000 troops each year) then this was always going to be a huge hill to climb.
At the end of the day we are sending our troops to a combat zone and if the MOD had to reduce all risks to zero we wouldn’t deploy anywhere in the world.