Ministers should stop ‘dragging their heels’ and address pension disparity for Gurkha veterans – Labour

Published

4 years ago

August 11, 2021

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The government needs to stop “dragging their heels” and address pension disparity for some Gurkha veterans, Labour has said.

Speaking to Kay Burley, shadow armed forces minister Stephen Morgan said it was “outrageous the inequality continues”.

A group of Gurkhas is staging a hunger strike opposite Downing Street, with their demonstration having now entered its fifth day.

Mr Morgan has written to Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and is urging him to “end this injustice”.

“I think it’s outrageous that there are people on the streets opposite Number 10 that are sleeping out there and not eating,” he told Sky News.

“We need to take action.”

In his letter to the defence secretary, Mr Morgan said: “The government has a basic responsibility to listen to the concerns of those who have fought for our country.

“I would urge you to meet with these veterans as I have in the past and will do so again this week.

“No veteran of the British Army should have to resort to a hunger strike to be heard.”

Gurkhas are Nepalese-born soldiers who have been recruited into the British army since 1815, fighting most recently in Iraq, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia.

The soldiers were first recruited by colonial rulers in India in the 19th century as a “martial race” known for their bravery.

In 2009, following a campaign supported by the actress Joanna Lumley, all veterans who retired before 1997 with at least four years of service were allowed to settle in the UK.

According to the Support Our Gurkhas website, the hunger strikers are campaigning for equal pensions for Gurkhas who retired before 1997 and are not eligible for a full UK Armed Forces pension.

Gurkhas who served from 1948 to 2007 were members of the Gurkha Pension Scheme (GPS).

This was closed in 2007 and all serving Gurkhas or those who retired after 1 July 1997 were given the option of transferring to the Armed Forces Pension Scheme (AFPS).

The date 1 July 1997 is when the Gurkhas became based in the UK and no longer classified as a Far East-based force.

Under the GPS, Gurkhas qualify for an immediate pension after 15 years of service, while for armed forces as a whole it is 22 years.

This can mean some Gurkhas will have been receiving pension payments for more than 20 years before many British soldiers of the same rank and length of service qualify for payments as part of the AFPS.

The GPS was based on the Indian Army model and was designed for Gurkhas retiring back to Nepal, where the cost of living is much lower than in the UK.

However, many of those Gurkhas will have taken up the right to settle in the UK following the change of policy under the Labour government in 2009.

Sky News contacted the Ministry of Defence to speak to a minister on air, but was told no one was available.

An MoD spokesperson told Sky News on Monday: “We greatly value the huge contribution Gurkhas make to the British Army and ensure they are supported with a generous pension and medical care during retirement in Nepal.

“We are committed to ensuring the Gurkha Pension Scheme is sustainable and fair alongside other UK public sector pensions.”

Pensions under the GPS were increased by between 10% and 34% in 2019, while £25m was invested in medical and healthcare facilities in Nepal for Gurkha veterans.

A public consultation on the latest changes to the scheme ended in March and the government is currently considering the size of the uplift that will be applied to the pensions.

The issue has been the subject of long-running campaigning over the years.

Responding to calls for reform in 2010, Labour defence minister Kevan Jones described the GPS as “good and fair” and said the MoD’s position on the matter was “legally and morally sound and beyond reproach”.

The exclusion of Gurkhas who served before 1 July 1997 has also been challenged in the courts, with the European Court of Human Rights ruling in 2016 that the move was “objectively and reasonably justified”.

But Rebecca Wilson, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers who has worked on cases relating to the Gurkhas, told Sky News there is “nothing stopping” the government from legislating to give those who retired before 1997 equal pension rights.

“It can be changed and it should be changed,” she told Kay Burley.

UK

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Published

3 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

UK

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva’s funeral in pictures

Published

4 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota and Andre Silva's funeral in pictures

The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.

The Liverpool forward, 28, and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday.

Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.

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Miguell Rocha played with Jota for around ten years with Gondomar Sport Clube in Portugal.

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The former captain was seen wiping away tears as he read messages and laid his tribute down.

UK

How Britain’s most notorious gangster turned up at a charity lunch to fact-check a retired detective’s talk

Published

9 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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How Britain's most notorious gangster turned up at a charity lunch to fact-check a retired detective's talk

Britain’s most notorious gangster and the detective who pursued him have been involved in a bizarre confrontation…at a charity lunch.

Former Detective Superintendent Ian Brown was at a Kent golf club and about to give a talk on the infamous £26m Brink’s-Mat gold robbery when he was summoned from the stage by officials.

Mr Brown, who appeared on the award-winning Sky News StoryCast podcast The Hunt For The Brink’s-Mat Gold in 2019, said: “I go outside and they say ‘he’s here’ and I say ‘who’s here’ and they say that table over there in the corner, that’s Kenny Noye with a baseball cap pulled down over his head.”

Noye stabbed to death an undercover policeman during the Brink’s-Mat investigation, but was acquitted of murder, though he was jailed for handling the stolen gold.

After his release, he used a knife again in the M25 road-rage murder of motorist Stephen Cameron.

“They said what are we going to do?” said Mr Brown.

“I said are you serving food? Well, just use plastic knives.”

Although Mr Brown had not personally arrested Noye over Brink’s-Mat he had identified him as a suspect months after the robbery.

Years later he met him during an ill-fated TV interview in which he quizzed him about his role in the robbery.

He said: “He told me everything I wanted to know except the truth. He still insists he had nothing to do with it.”

The interview was never broadcast after the prison authorities threatened to send Noye back to jail for a breach of his parole.

Mr Brown, 86, said: “I went over to him and said ‘thanks for coming, nice of you to pop in’, but I don’t believe you’ve turned up with your sons and grandkids to listen to me telling how you killed a police officer.

“And he said ‘I want to make sure you don’t say I’ve been dealing drugs’ and I said ‘I’ve never said that Kenny’.”

The retired detective told Noye he wasn’t going to change his presentation just because he was there.

“He said ‘mate, I wouldn’t expect you to and I’ll come up [on stage] if you want me to’.

“Can you think how he’s turned up with his family to listen to somebody talking about you killing the police? Now, you put logic on that.”

The bizarre story emerged when I rang Mr Brown after I’d been told about the meeting.

I also wanted to ask him about the recent BBC hit drama series The Gold which retold the story of the Brink’s-Mat heist at Heathrow Airport in 1983.

“It was an absolute shambles, far too much dramatic licence and the real story was so much better,” said the ex-detective, whose job had been to follow the trail of the 6,800 gold bars to the US and the Caribbean.

He said he chatted to one of the show’s writers for a long time in a phone call but then heard no more.

“They invented people, changed a bit here and there and made it politically correct in so many ways. I’m just very sad that that is what people will believe.

“And I couldn’t work out who my character was supposed to be. I could have been one of the female cops.”

He also criticised the portrayal of Noye, now 78, as a likeable jack-the-lad character when the truth about the double killer with a volatile temper was quite different.