LGBT veterans ‘furious' at slow pace of compensation
Former members of the military dismissed or discharged for being gay said they have been left 'angry and disappointed' at low numbers of compensation payouts.
A campaign group said only 24 payments have been made out of more than 1,000 applications since a scheme opened five months ago.
In December, the Government announced up to £75 million for the LGBT financial recognition scheme, with payments of up to £70,000 for each veteran 'to acknowledge the historic wrongs they experienced in the armed forces'.
The Fighting with Pride military charity said eight of the 24 payouts were to veterans with life-limiting health conditions.
The charity's chief executive Peter Gibson said older veterans have been left 'furious' and feeling that 'justice delayed is justice denied'.
He has written to Defence Secretary John Healey to convey the 'growing anger, frustration and impatience' of veterans, and to say the scheme 'is sadly not delivering at a pace which meets the expectations of the ageing veterans we are working with'.
Mr Gibson said a staff of 15 people to deal with the scheme 'together with underperforming technology is clearly and simply not enough to meet the demand'.
The scheme's launch should have 'marked a moment of healing and recognition for LGBT+ veterans', he said, adding it is instead 'beginning to inflict new wounds' as they relive their trauma when applying for compensation.
Emma Storey, who was under investigation by military police and left the Women's Royal Army Corps in 1987, shared her anger over the delays.
She said: 'We feel angry and disappointed. We were treated abysmally during our service. Forced out for our sexuality and loving the people we love, only to be let down by a casual approach to the payments we're owed.
'I'm 64 years old and deserve to enjoy some dignity in the later years of my life.
'After reopening the wounds by applying for the financial recognition scheme, the least I'd expect is to be showed the decency and respect of a prompt resolution.'
Mr Gibson said it is 'high time the Government now pulls out all the stops for these veterans who bravely served their country, yet were appallingly treated for simply being gay'.
He said time is of the essence for an older population.
'Many affected veterans are in their 60s, 70s and 80s – they are furious justice is being delayed,' said Mr Gibson.
'For many it means justice delayed is justice denied. Fighting With Pride will continue to do everything we can to find every single affected LGBT veteran and ensure they get the reparations they deserve.'
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: 'We recognise the need to work quickly through the over 1,000 applications for financial recognition we've received.
'The process of working through the applications requires checking a number of information sources and historical records, however we understand the need for timeliness in delivering this important scheme.
'We are working closely with stakeholder groups and applicants can receive updates on their progress from the team via gov.uk.'
Data published earlier this month showed 40 people have had historic convictions for same-sex activity wiped from their records.
The disregards and pardons scheme was launched in 2012 but applied only to men and only for specific convictions.
It was extended in 2023 to include women and to cover any repealed or abolished offence that was once used to criminalise same-sex sexual activity.
New data published by the Government this month showed that between June 2023 and March this year 40 people had their convictions 'disregarded', meaning they had been deleted from official records.
The majority of these (35) were for military offences while three came under the Sexual Offences Act 1956.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News
8 minutes ago
- Sky News
The NHS winter crisis is a recurring seasonal theme – tackling it will bring challenges
Longer summer days when conversations revolve around hosepipe bans and barbeques might seem million miles away from the dark, cold nights of winter. But right now that's exactly what NHS Trust leaders are thinking about, as they publish their new Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for England. They are busy planning their winter response. To devise and implement a battle strategy to prevent the appalling scenes that have played out in emergency departments across the country, with patients on trolleys waiting for hours on end and ambulances stacked up and unable to offload the sickest patients for the care they need and deserve. The basic care they are entitled to. Like Christmas TV repeats and snow-capped robins, the NHS winter crisis is a recurring seasonal theme. The poor care has become normalised. It has come to define the NHS, and that's why it is so important for Wes Streeting to make it a priority. His Urgent and Emergency Care Plan was trailed back in January when the health service was in the grip of one of its worst winter crises. The hundreds of millions of pounds in investment, extra ambulances, and new urgent treatment centres are to stop a repeat of those unacceptable emergency department scenes. But there's more: a shift away from hospital-based acute emergency treatment to community-based care. More investment on virtual wards and paramedics armed with a full patient history treating their call-outs in situ, and therefore keeping as many patients away from ED as possible. The challenge here will be to get NHS and Social Care providers to work together. This has not happened as much as it should or could. 1:39 Keeping patients away from the ED doors will also require a reset in patient expectations. And ED consultants will tell you, as they tell me often, that a significant percentage of patients who turn up at A&E do not need to be there. Their needs are better served in speciality care in the community. But they come because the ED never closes. All of these patients need to be triaged and that volume creates the backlogs and lengthy waiting times. And while the urgent care recovery plan has been broadly supported and welcomed by the royal colleges, there is some concern that not enough has been done to address the crisis in social care. 4:01 The plan does highlight the need to improve patient flow through a hospital, the ability to discharge medically fit patients back into the community and free up beds for waiting patients. But for this to happen, social care packages need to be in place for patients who need them. This has been a constant challenge and unless there is significant investment in social care, it will continue to be a problem. Wes Streeting will say that this will be addressed when he publishes his NHS 10-Year Plan, expected sometime in July.
New Statesman
29 minutes ago
- New Statesman
Britain's gift to Putin
Photo byOn Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Russia has now used more than 27,000 aerial bombs, more than 11,000 armed drones and thousands more guided munitions to attack Ukraine. Among the victims of this week's attacks were an emergency worker, his wife and their one-year-old grandson, the 632nd child killed in Ukraine since Russia's invasion. And yet British businesses continue to enable the Russian state to secure its main source of income: revenue from oil and gas. New research shared exclusively with the New Statesman has found that since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, more than £200bn in Russian fossil fuel exports have been shipped using UK-based maritime services. A single UK-based firm has carried almost a quarter of Russia's exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) since the war began. While our government seeks to increase its defence budget, Britain's active role in the Russian fossil fuel trade helps to maintain the military spending of a nuclear power currently at war with a close European ally. The study, which has been conducted by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), finds that the value of Russian crude oil, oil products and LNG shipped under British ownership or insurance since the war began has now reached £205.8bn. Three quarters of Russian LNG carriers were covered by UK insurance. Britain officially stopped importing Russian oil and oil products nine months after the invasion (it became illegal to do so on 5 December 2022). But a sanctions loophole means Britain keeps buying Putin's products: Russian crude is shipped to refineries in Turkey and India and then returns as oil products. CREA estimates that the UK has indirectly bought £1.4bn in Russian oil through this loophole, providing more than half a billion pounds' worth of revenue to the Kremlin. Much of the jet fuel taking British holidaymakers to sunnier climes this summer will have entered the supply chain in the oilfields of Siberia. Europe continues to buy Russian LNG directly, and in 2024 imported more LNG from Russia than ever before. Much of this is shipped, entirely legally, by a single British company: Seapeak, which is headquartered in Glasgow and which owns seven specialist LNG carriers, which can power through ice two metres thick. This is not subject to a ban and there is no suggestion that Seapeak has broken any laws. Seapeak was mentioned in an Early Day Motion on Russian LNG, which was signed by 34 cross-party MPs in January. CREA says that Seapeak alone has carried Russian LNG worth £13bn since the war began. Elsewhere, Russian fossil fuels are also shipped by a 'dark fleet' of uninsured vessels, whose ownership is obscured. As previously reported, these ships pass in sight of our shores on an almost daily basis as they sail through the English Channel. Since Labour came to power, the UK government has taken a more determined stance towards sanctioning these ships and those who enable their sale, including an accountant who allegedly arranged for the sale of vessels. A government spokesperson told the New Statesman: 'We are working with G7 and EU partners to eliminate remaining dependencies on Russian energy as soon as possible. We will not hesitate to take further action to increase economic pressure on Putin.' Why can't we stop paying Putin immediately? In a word: inflation. If Western countries entirely quit the Russian oil and gas habit, the wholesale price of energy would spike in a similar manner to 2022, bringing the price of almost everything else with it. The last inflationary surge cost the UK government £67bn in a single year in additional spending in support for consumers and businesses, and the population still endured a historic rise in the cost of living accompanied by strikes across the public sector. No government is going to impose that upon its voters, and even if it did, it wouldn't last long. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe This doesn't mean there is nothing the UK can do. Energy analysts say it is a question of supply: when the oil and gas market has enough capacity to make a sudden drop in Russian fossil fuels less important, sanctions can be imposed and enforced. The pragmatic answer is probably then to secure LNG and crude from other countries. The most realistic answer to this problem therefore comes from productive diplomacy with the US for LNG, and Saudi Arabia and others for oil. In the long term, of course, it means not relying on fossil fuels, because we don't have enough to power our country. Amid all the talk of how much we're going to spend on our military, it's important we also try to avoid paying for our enemy's. [See also: Revealed: how the City of London keeps Putin's oil flowing] Related
The Sun
37 minutes ago
- The Sun
The 4 signs of skin cancer beyond moles as Atomic Kitten's Natasha Hamilton reveals diagnosis after ‘itch on her back'
ATOMIC Kitten's Natasha Hamilton opened up about her skin cancer battle, revealing she was diagnosed with the disease after getting a persistent itchy spot on her back. In an emotional Good Morning Britain interview, the singer, 42, revealed she'd had basal cell carcinoma (BCC). 9 9 BCC is the most common skin cancer type in the UK. It begins in the basal cells — a type of cell within the skin that produces new skin cells as old ones die off - and is more likely to develop on skin regularly exposed to the sun, like the face, head or neck. The cancer often tends to appear as a pearly lump, but it can also develop as a scar-like patch on the skin or rough, scaly growths. Natasha initially mistook the diseased patch of skin as a mosquito bite. She told her hosts Kate Garraway and Rob Rinder that she developed an itch after catching a bit too much sun while on holiday in Majorca. Natasha said: "So I had been on holiday, I wasn't actually in the sun a lot, my baby was only about five months old and I was breastfeeding. "One afternoon I had her on my lap, my back was in the sun and I burnt. "I don't know if it was later that day or the next day, I had an itchy spot on my back. "I felt it, I went "oh mosquito bite". 'It wasn't until four weeks later when I was at home and it was itching I was like 'hang on a minute, that seems a bit long for a mosquito bite'. 'I asked my husband to have look and he went "oh that's not a bite," he took a picture. Natasha revealed: "Originally it had just been a dark freckle that I'd had on my back for many years. "It wasn't even raised, it wasn't a mole, it was just a freckle." The star sought specialist help and was diagnosed with BCC. 9 9 9 She was able to have the cancerous skin removed and is now living cancer-free. But she revealed: "Now I have to be really vigilant, I have to check my skin all the time. "Since then I've had a few things appear where I've had to go back to the dermatologist, they're on the 'watch list'. "This is probably something I am going to have to keep an eye for the rest of my life," Natasha said. The 4 signs of BCC When you think of signs of skin cancer, a mole probably comes to mind. This is usually the case with melanoma, the deadliest form of the disease. But non-melanoma skin cancer - which includes BCC - can manifest in other more subtle ways. According to Macmillan Cancer Support, a BCC might have some of these features: A smooth, firm lump that may be pearly, pink, red, brown or black – on black or brown skin, it is more likely to be pearly, brown or black A lump that is sunken in the middle like a crater A flat patch of scaly, crusty or irritated skin A scar-like area of pale, shiny skin This type of skin cancer tends to be painless but it can cause itchiness or bleeding. 9 9 9 Over time, a BCC may develop into an open sore that does not heal. Any part of your skin can be affected, but it's most common in areas exposed to the sun, such as the: Head, face and ears Neck and shoulders Back Hands Lower legs BCCs mainly people with fair skin, but those with other skin types may also be at risk, according to the British Skin Foundation. Those with the highest risk of developing a basal cell carcinoma are: People with pale skin who burn easily and rarely tan Those who have had a lot of exposure to the sun, such as people with outdoor hobbies or outdoor workers, and people who have lived in sunny climates People who have used sun beds or have regularly sunbathed. People who have previously had a basal cell carcinoma Almost all cases of BCC can be cured and it's almost never a danger to life, according to the charity. However, if a BCC is not treated early, it may get larger and may be more likely to come back. Treatment can include surgically removing the affected area of skin. There are two main types of skin cancer - non melanoma skin cancer and melanoma skin cancer. Non melanoma skin cancer includes: Basal cell skin cancer - this is also called basal cell carcinoma (BCC) Squamous cell skin cancer - this is also called squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) Some other rare types Non melanoma skin cancers tend to develop most often on skin that's exposed to the sun. There is a high cure rate for these cancers. Most people only have minor surgery and don't need further treatment. Melanoma skin cancer is when abnormal cells in the skin start to grow and divide in an uncontrolled way. It starts in skin cells called melanocytes. These cells are in the deep layer of the epidermis. Around 17,500 people are diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer in the UK each year. The number of people diagnosed has increased over the last few decades. Melanoma skin cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the UK.
