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 said that the government was “dragging its 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.
Mr Hinchley-Robson, now 58 and living in Blackheath, south-east London, with his husband Dave, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer in May.
He has called for urgent help from ministers to reinstate his full forces pension as a means of getting his “house in order.”
The government said it does not “retrospectively pay pensions for employment time that was not served.”
Britain