Ab Fab star blasts No.10 over Gurkha pension row
JOANNA LUMLEY has urged ministers to meet ‘brave and loyal’ Gurkha veterans staging a hunger strike outside No.10 in a row over pensions.
The protesters, who today entered their tenth day without food, want equal rights for Gurkhas who retired before 1997 and are not eligible for a full UK armed forces pension.
Last night, the Ab Fab star threw her weight behind the Support Our Gurkhas group, saying the government ‘cannot praise our veterans to the high heavens when it suits them, but condemn them to poverty when it doesn’t’.
The 75-year-old (pictured), who in 2009 led a campaign to allow Gurkhas settlement rights in Britain and whose father was a major in the Gurkha Rifles, said: ‘Seeing such brave and loyal veterans feeling they have no option but to take the drastic step of entering a hunger strike will be deeply upsetting to the vast majority of the public.
‘Only a deep sense of injustice could drive these respectful souls to this point. At the heart of this matter is how we value those who have offered, and sometimes given, the ultimate sacrifice to protect our way of life.
‘I urge the government to meet these veterans and to cut through the morass of detail surrounding the complexity of the various pension schemes and find some way to address the injustices.’ On Friday, defence secretary Ben Wallace said he was happy to meet with protesters, but warned no government ‘of any colour’ had ever made retrospective changes to pensions similar to the ones the demonstrators are calling for. In 2007, Labour changed the rules – backdated to 1997 – as it was felt more retired Gurkhas were likely to settle in the UK on discharge. The previous pension scheme was lower as it was assumed personnel would return to Nepal, where the cost of living is significantly lower.