Politics Home Article | Is Britain’s commitment to veterans slowly fading away?

Ecossais Revenant de Combat by the French painter Francois Flameng

Veterans are pulled into the spotlight in great surges of public emotion, only to be swept back out again as the tide of attention recedes. Their needs don’t come and go, but the system built to support them often seems to. Despite high profile claims of success from various governments, our workload at Veterans Aid would indicate that this assertion is the worrying reality for some veterans.

I’ve always felt that the nation’s link to veterans was anchored in four words – service, sacrifice, honour, and respect. Moreover, that it was universally accepted that a grateful nation would care for them in old age or adversity.But today, that promise sometimes feels disturbingly fragile. Support doesn’t stand firm; it surges, collapses, and drifts. One moment veterans are hailed as heroes; the next, they’re left navigating a maze of inconsistent policies, short‑lived initiatives, and a system that in some cases, seems to forget them as quickly as it remembers. The reality on the ground tells a different story. Veterans don’t need waves. They need foundations.

From my perspective, as one delivering frontline services to a large group of veterans in crisis, the shift in perceived obligation is no longer abstract – and that adjustment has consequences. In both delivery and quality the system of care for some veterans is a piecemeal, patchy, postcode lottery that frequently delivers without reference to urgency or actual need. Long term plans to improve the situation are underway but I fear that this will be too little, too late. 

Recently I was given a sharp reminder of what it is to be forgotten and invisible as a veteran. I spent time talking to ‘John’, a very unwell ex-soldier who was sleeping rough. Fortunately there are fewer like him now, but one is too many.

I’ve had over 30 years’ experience in the world of veterans’ wellbeing but came away from that meeting with ‘John’, feeling despondent. It seemed that all the talk by the great and the good over the past 15 years had generated little more than hot air for veterans in real trouble.

I recall someone in government once describing Britain as “the best country in the world to be a veteran”, but it’s a fantasy to suggest that what was once a serious commitment, is still being honoured. Like promises written in vanishing ink, the pledges made to people like ‘John’ are rapidly disappearing.

This homeless former soldier had been in prison. He was in poor health and had been hospitalised, but he couldn’t name one of the government’s much vaunted veterans’ welfare initiatives (e.g. VALOUR et al) and it was only by chance that he found Veterans Aid. As we chatted over a coffee, during a wide-ranging conversation, I brought up the Armed Forces Covenant. As he scoffed at the suggestion it had any relevance to him, I could see that he had not a single visible tooth. Is this really the standard of veteran care we are settling for? 

In recent months we, at Veterans Aid, have seen a series of moments that, taken individually, might be dismissed as symbolic; debates over legacy legislation which completely ignores the costs to individual veterans and their families, and decisions such as the refusal to grant the Royal Regiment of Scotland the Freedom of the City of Glasgow.* But taken together, they point to something more significant; a growing vagueness in how we, as a nation, view those who have served.

For the veterans we work with, this uncertainty is not abstract. It fosters a quiet yet deepening sense of being forgotten – or, more troublingly, of being reassessed, reconsidered, even devalued. And it raises the uncomfortable question of what it means to be a veteran in a post-heroes era; a time of fading hope?

As sector charities become more process-driven and qualification for support more complex, the likelihood of excluding those in greatest need increases. Just a week ago we encountered two veterans who could barely read. In a digital age, with a growing reliance on IT literacy, street dwellers without an address, no access to smart phones, TVs or newspapers, know nothing about advertising or marketing campaigns. They are effectively unreachable.

This is wrong: Care must meet veterans where and how they are, not where systems demand they be.

We are used to talking about moral injury in the context of conflict; something that happens when individuals experience a betrayal of deeply held values. But there is another form of moral injury that receives far less attention. What happens when that sense of betrayal occurs at home? When veterans encounter a system that is slow, fragmented, and too often reactive; when they feel they must fight to be understood; when recognition becomes conditional? I believe that that, too, leaves a mark which may have a binary impact on attitudes towards recruiting. To put it bluntly, no cut is deeper than perceiving that you have been forgotten by the nation you once served.

Despite good intentions, much of what now exists to support veterans in the UK is a hodgepodge of services. Some are genuinely fit for purpose, but others are woefully inadequate. Charities like ours step in at the point of crisis; dealing with homelessness, acute mental health needs, and financial collapse.

We stabilise, we rebuild, we move people forward, but too often, despite our effectiveness, we are intervening late, navigating systems that were never designed with coherence in mind. This is not a criticism of any single department or policy; it is an observation about a system for veterans that has evolved for political reasons without a clear, shared foundation other than in policy documents. 

The gulf between policy, intent and genuine delivery is huge. Throwing money at organisations in the hope that it will result in a coherent effective model is nothing short of laughable. Especially when some have no knowledge, or only scant understanding, of the uniqueness of military life. This a recipe for chaos, not a solution.

Ultimately, veteran care is not just about provision of services; it is about national intent. And if that intent becomes uncertain or unclear, and veterans increasingly see their support becoming politicised, diluted, or inconsistently applied, then the system it is built upon begins to weaken. Because when intent blurs, service, sacrifice, honour and respect slip from principle to pretence.

What I see from the coalface of crisis intervention is not a sudden failure, but a gradual unravelling – i.e. more complex cases developing; longer periods of instability; greater reliance on emergency intervention and, most concerningly, a growing sense among veterans themselves that they are no longer fully seen. Overlay that with money going to organisations who must agree to operational controls by funders, and the client starts to become a case rather than a human being. In the end, slow motion collapse is just as damaging as a catastrophe.

This should concern policymakers, not only because of what it means for those individuals, but because of what it signals about the future. You cannot sustain a system of support if the societal commitment that underpins it is not there. The United Kingdom has long taken pride in how it treats its armed forces community, but this is a moment that demands more than pride. It demands clarity, consistency, and listening leadership. And to those living with the current system such as ‘John’, the truth is obvious; scale means nothing if people can’t be ‘seen’.

Sustainability means moving beyond symbolic gestures and short-term funding cycles based on the needs of government rather than the needs of the substantial number of veterans who are falling through the cracks. It means building a coherent, properly coordinated system that intervenes early, before crises develop. It means removing ambiguity around recognition and ensuring that those who have served are neither politicised nor marginalised. And it means working in genuine partnership with all players in the charitable sector, not just those who ‘play the game’ to get funding.

When resources flow to those who toe the party line rather than those who actually meet veterans where they are, the community loses the very organisations that understand its realities. The result is a support landscape that looks vaguely impressive on paper yet fails the people it claims to serve. Scale, brand and symbolism are no substitute for substance.

What troubles me most is the way funding so often quietly shifts toward large, branded organisations – often those most skilled at navigating political expectations – while smaller, frontline charities are left in the wilderness. Analysis¹ of UK charity accounts shows that charities with annual incomes above £10m constitute only around one per cent of organisations yet account for 67.5 per cent of total charity income, highlighting the concentration of resources within a small number of very large charities. This is the inevitable outcome of a system that rewards presentation over proximity to the problem. But the effect is unmistakable; veterans will inevitably be harmed.

We know our charity saves lives and, just as critically, eases the burden on the taxpayer by around £2m per year. In other words, it works. But not one single question has been asked, from anyone in government, as to how this is done – and that is worrying. 

I say none of this in anger, but out of a genuine wish to see a system worthy of the people it exists to support. Progress has been made, and more will be made, but some veterans will continue to be failed if the only model that counts is the one defined by government.

Those who deliver real impact, often quietly, often without fanfare, must be brought into the conversation without having their independence diluted or their effectiveness constrained. If the current drift continues, it will do more than fail individuals; it will signal that national gratitude is conditional, that service can be praised in public yet overlooked in practice. That would diminish not only the Covenant, but the values we claim to hold as a nation.

What is needed now is clarity, genuine consistency, and a willingness to work with those who truly understand the landscape. Anything less is passive acceptance of a situation that will inevitably get worse.

References

1. Research and Analysis. Research Report: Mapping and Understanding the UK Civil Society Sector. Published 28.05.2026

* The Flameng painting depicts Scottish soldiers, specifically members of Highland regiments wearing kilts and returning from the front lines during WW1