Veterans affected by LGBT ban should get six-figure payout 'without any shadow of a doubt'
Military veterans who lost their jobs in the Armed Forces as a result of the LGBT ban deserve more money than they are being offered by the Government, according to several charities.
Under the Government compensation scheme, the total amount available has been capped at £50m and the National Audit Office says up to 4,000 people are expected to be eligible – meaning an average payout of £12,500 each.
However, military charity Fighting With Pride has delivered an open letter to the Prime Minister calling for the Government to revise the compensation on offer for those veterans affected by the LGBT ban.
This is to ensure that the financial reparations bring justice to those who lost careers and pensions, but who were also subjected to military police interrogations, prison, intimate personal examinations and forcibly outed to friends and family during the 'gay ban' which existed until 2000.
Craig Jones from Fighting With Pride told BFBS Forces News that the amount is nowhere near what veterans deserve.
"When we look at the impact upon their lives, which has lasted for decades, the levels of financial impoverishment and the hurt that people have felt, both at the time of their arrest and today, then this should be six figure sums for those most affected without any shadow of a doubt," he said.
Homosexuality started being decriminalised in the UK in 1996, but the ban continued in the Armed Forces until 2000.
Mr Jones said those were "frightening" times in the military.
"I remember seeing an open letter from one of the heads of the Armed Forces in 1995 in which he said that he never wished to serve with queers and lesbians," he said.
"And that percolated down throughout the command system.
"We saw people marched away by the Royal Military Police to what to some extent was a fate unknown back in the day.
"It was the expectation that if you were caught, you'd be arrested, investigated and subjected to some pretty cruel treatment."
The Ministry of Defence says the treatment of former personnel was "wholly unacceptable" and it will provide more details of the compensation scheme later in the year.
It comes after veterans told BFBS Forces News that serving in the military while the LGBT ban was in place was "like a pressure cooker", adding "nothing will ever repair" what happened to those personnel affected and echoed Mr Jones' calls for increased compensation.
One veteran, Kevin Basely, who served in the RAF before being forced to resign his commission as a result of his sexuality, said there should be "sincere and timely reparations".
"Those veterans have suffered in terms of the humiliation, imprisonment, outing to their families, thrown out, homeless," he explained.
"Sexual assault, effectively, from some of the medical examinations that were forced on them.
"And you've got to remember as well that some of those people from the ban are no longer with us or they're elderly, some are terminally ill."
He added: "They need that compensation as soon as possible so that that debate needs to happen sooner rather than later."
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