LGBT Veterans: Etherton Review

Alex Baker Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)]

This is an important day for a whole generation of ex-service personnel in my constituency and across the UK who lost everything they knew because of a policy that was discriminatory and wrong. I pay tribute to the charity Fighting With Pride and the coalition that has led this campaign with the dignity of ex-service personnel, in the very best of that tradition. We speak a lot in this House about the tremendous debt and respect we owe to our armed forces. That is something we in Aldershot and Farnborough feel very deeply, as people from our community have served in every major conflict that our country has faced over the past 200 years, yet the stories we are hearing today remind us that that respect is about not just words but deeds. I thank Lord Etherton for his work and the Government for listening, responding and taking action.

I will use my time in today’s debate to draw the House’s attention to the sister ban of this policy, for which the Government are rightly compensating people—the ban on people living with HIV joining or serving in our military. That ban was not repealed in 2000; it was repealed in 2022, and even now, there are loopholes that are still being exploited. So regressive were the rules that people were banned from joining the armed forces even if they were HIV-negative but were taking the HIV prevention drug PrEP. Regrettably but not surprisingly, opportunities to revise these rules were missed in 2008, in 2016, and yet again in 2019. Even as the British Government accepted the “can’t pass it on” science about people living with HIV in relation to treatment in the years that followed, no change was forthcoming. Those who were already serving personnel were labelled as medically not deployable.

It took the Terrence Higgins Trust, the National AIDS Trust and a remarkable Hampshire resident, Lieutenant Commander Oliver Brown MBE, to right this wrong. Oli was cycling through London when a brick hit his bike and he hit a wall. He was taken to a London hospital, and—as is finally becoming custom, due to the last Government and the £27 million announced by the Prime Minister last week—he was routinely tested for HIV. He discovered that he was positive. As his broken arm was being fixed, Oli had to come to terms with a stigmatised diagnosis and worry not about whether he would live or have his family’s support but about whether he had a job or a place to live. When he told his employer, the Royal Navy, he was labelled and held back. Thankfully, he found similar guts and spirit to those of Craig and Fighting With Pride, and became a relentless campaigner on this issue.

In June 2022, the rules were finally swept away not just for the LGBT community, but for anyone living with HIV. Days later, the Civil Aviation Authority did the same, and removed all barriers to pilots living with HIV on medication. That is why everyone involved was so surprised that the Military Aviation Authority gave itself an extra two months to remove the ban, and the obligations imposed then have still not been fully fulfilled. People living with HIV are still not able to join the armed forces as air crew or controllers. It would be a great thing if, off the back of this debate, my hon. Friend the Minister committed to investigate this issue, and agreed to meet Oliver Brown, the Terrence Higgins Trust and the National AIDS Trust to find a path forward on this issue.

We need to turn our military culture from just an absence of bans to one that promotes HIV and sexual health testing, with people being encouraged to take charge of their sexual health. The military needs to be a place where HIV stigma has no home. Our amazing HIV charities are on hand to help, and the UK could be the first fast-track military in committing to the goal of zero HIV transmissions, zero preventable deaths and zero HIV stigma. To meet that global goal, we need our armed forces to do their bit. If we achieve it, it will be the first time we have stopped the onward transmission of any virus without a vaccine or a cure. We cannot fail. Today is a great day, but the fight for equality is a journey, not a destination.