Wes Streeting has been the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Defence since 20 July 2026, and the government's own ministerial register names him as the current holder of the post. He is the first openly gay politician to run the department. In an interview recorded with Iain Dale at the Edinburgh Fringe in August, he said he had received more online homophobia in his first three weeks in the job than in the rest of his life. He called the volume "unbelievable" and said the reason was that some people could not accept a gay man leading the armed forces.
Streeting also said the appointment itself had gone almost unremarked in the press, which he took as a sign of how far the country has moved, and that a colleague at the Ministry of Defence had told him in his first week what it meant to see an openly gay man in the role.
The ban ended in 2000, and the redress scheme closes this December
The history behind the appointment is short. Gay men and lesbians were barred from the British armed forces until 11 January 2000, and personnel suspected of being gay were investigated and pushed out. The Ministry of Defence now runs the LGBT Financial Recognition Scheme for veterans affected by the ban between 27 July 1967 and 11 January 2000. It pays a flat 50,000 pounds to those who were dismissed or discharged and between 1,000 and 20,000 pounds to those harmed in other ways, and it closes to applications on 12 December 2026.
What the police numbers say
Police records give a scale to the everyday version of what Streeting described. The Home Office release of 9 October 2025, Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2025, counted 18,702 sexual orientation hate crimes, down 2 percent on the year before and the third annual fall in a row. Two things qualify that figure. It excludes the Metropolitan Police, whose recording system changed in February 2024, so London is missing from it. And it remains well above the 15,668 offences recorded in the year to March 2021.
What changes for visitors
Nothing in the legal position. Same-sex marriage and equality law covering sexual orientation apply across the United Kingdom, and the bars and saunas on our pages for London, Brighton and Edinburgh are open as before. What the defence secretary described, and what the police figures count, is the part the law does not settle.
