Bombed cadet has blindness payout halved - because he had already lost an eye to cancer

Stephen Menary, 21, suffered horrific injuries in the blast outside a Territorial Army centre seven years ago.

The bomb blew off his left hand and ear and ripped open his chest and stomach.

It also destroyed his left eye – the right he had lost to cancer as a baby.

Bureaucrats seized on this to rule that rather than get £110,000 for total blindness Mr Menary would receive £55,000, the payment for losing one eye.

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He is now set to receive a final settlement of £270,000, just £60,000 of which was set aside for loss of future earnings.

The package will give him an income of around £12,000 a year – little more than the amount he will lose in benefits.

Mr Menary, who will need lifelong care and is unlikely ever to work, says he will challenge the ruling by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.

"I've only ever asked for fairness," he said. "The last thing I am is a sponger or a money-grabber. But it is almost impossible to live on the amount they have awarded me.

"They don't judge me as someone who is totally blind, which I am, but as someone who has sight in one eye. I am also partially deaf."

Mr Menary's life was shattered in February 2001 when he spotted an army-issue torch on the pavement while on his way to a paratroop training evening in White City, West London.

Finding it would not work, the then 14-year-old opened the battery cover and triggered an IRA booby-trap bomb.

Despite his injuries, he was ineligible for military help and has had to wait seven years for civil compensation.

Mr Menary secured, however, a £70,000 interim payment which went on equipping the Birmingham flat he rents from St Dunstan's, a veterans' charity.

On his 18th birthday, he was feted by Tony Blair, whose wife Cherie posed with the youngster on the steps of No.10 to acknowledge his bravery.

Stephen's lump sum is likely to generate around £12,000 a year in interest for him to live on.

But because he has more than £16,000 of savings in the bank, he will lose his means-tested incapacity benefit, rent and council tax allowances which together come to £9,996 a year.

The payout will leave him better off by just £2,000 a year or £38 a week.

He said his efforts to learn how to do household chores with one hand had seen him stripped of cash that was paying for his long-term care.

"The system favours those who do nothing to improve their lives at the cost of those who struggle hard to achieve a little independence," he said.

Diane Dernie, whose son Ben Parkinson was at the centre of the Daily Mail's campaign for better compensation for injured troops, said Mr Menary had fallen victim to senseless bureaucracy.

"Treating him as someone who has only lost one eye is simply grotesque," she added. "The incident blinded him. It's as simple as that."

Stephen's mother Carol said: "It makes me cry what they've done to him. He's been left to rot."

The compensation authority said it would not comment on individual cases.