A veteran discharged from the RAF for being gay has called on the Government to urgently reinstate his military pension after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Simon Hinchley-Robson suggested the Government is "dragging their feet" as he insisted compensation or his pension should be sorted "sooner rather than later".
Mr Hinchley-Robson was a 21-year-old cook at RAF Brawdy, west Wales, in 1986 when his superiors found out he was gay. He was subjected to four days of interrogation and discharged, and never received an apology or his armed forces pension.
Evidence of the treatment Mr Hinchley-Robson suffered was read out by his MP Clive Efford in Parliament, with ministers advising that he contact the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to make a claim for his pension. The Government has since set up an independent review into how LGBT armed forces personnel were treated before the year 2000, when a ban on them serving openly was lifted.
