Oliver Ryan

My hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee—it is good to see him in his place—is completely right about the recommendations made as part of the review. I will come on to that point shortly. I pay tribute to Fighting With Pride, an LGBT veterans charity, for the amazing work they do in advocating and supporting the health and wellbeing of LGBT veterans, service personnel and their families. I have met Craig Jones and Carl Austin-Behan, whose strength and work in this area have been invaluable to many. They make the important point, more eloquently than I, that this is about security. It is about the historic injustice of lives ruined by prison sentences, criminal records and being labelled as sex offenders, and the shame that brings. Indeed, Craig highlighted two particular cases to me. The first was of “Steven”, a man imprisoned for his sexuality during the 1980s while serving in Germany. The second is “David”, a Gulf war veteran imprisoned and registered as a sex offender in the mid ’90s, just months before I was born. This stuff is not ancient history. Lord Etherton’s review makes stark the terrible experiences that so many LGBTQ veterans had to endure. His report bears out the painful reality of being forcibly removed from the armed forces, the harassment these people faced and the acute losses that such discrimination led to. As one veteran said, particularly poignantly, “My ejection from the army made me homeless. My mother disowned me for ‘bringing shame to the family’ and I ended up living in a car with an unhealthy relationship with alcohol until I got myself back together. It took years.” That summarises the deep emotional scars that have been left by a system that failed in its duty to protect those who served. My own constituent “Steven”—I would not be raising this issue without his lobbying throughout the campaign and since I became an MP—was not a gay man but was dismissed based on suspicion about his sexuality. He was left with a life in tatters, living in shame and anguish for years and his relationship with his family was broken because of the decision that was taken about him. The review’s findings are both alarming and revealing, highlighting that even after the repeal of the ban LGBT veterans continued to face both discrimination and stigma—and many still face significant barriers in accessing the full range of benefits and services they deserve, underscoring how unwelcoming the culture can be for LGBT service members. It is unacceptable. It is not what we want for Britain and it cannot be what the armed forces are about. I know that the Minister agrees.