Former Royal Navy sailor Luke Pierce, 45, has credited Scotland's Adult Disability Payment with helping him turn his life around after a freak accident left him unable to walk.
Pierce, who served for 13 years in the Royal Navy on vessels including HMS Ark Royal, HMS Defender and HMS Prince of Wales, is spending Remembrance Sunday in London reuniting with former colleagues for the first time since leaving the Navy in 2021.
Accident at HMS Nelson
In 2017, during a football game at the HMS Nelson land base in Portsmouth, Pierce was hit on the head by an over-inflated ball.
“It came at me like a rocket,” he said. “I knew something was wrong because I couldn’t hear properly. I had better odds of winning the lottery that day than having the injury I ended up with.”
The impact perforated his eardrum and dislocated a bone in his inner ear, leading to chronic dizziness, balance difficulties and the loss of his sense of taste following surgery.
Diagnosis and discharge
As his condition worsened, walking became increasingly difficult. His legs stopped functioning properly days before he was medically discharged from the Navy in 2021.
Doctors diagnosed functional neurological disorder (FND), a condition that affects how the brain sends and receives signals. It helped explain many of the symptoms Pierce was experiencing and confirmed the life he had known was unlikely to return.
Now living in Scotland since being posted to Rosyth in Fife in 2018, Pierce experiences unpredictable symptoms, including numbness and tingling in his legs, severe fatigue and mobility problems that leave him reliant on crutches.
Support and costs
Following his discharge, Pierce rebuilt his life with his wife Niki and now works as a civil servant. Alongside support from family and employers, he says the Adult Disability Payment has helped him manage the additional costs of living with a disability.
“People don’t always see the extra costs that come with a disability,” he said. “Things like mobility equipment, travel, car adaptations and heating all add up.”
Pierce hopes his experience highlights how quickly circumstances can change. “Disability can happen to anyone. Support helps us live our lives as independently as possible,” he said.
The Adult Disability Payment, administered by the Scottish Government, was introduced in 2022. Ministers say the non-means tested benefit is designed to be more compassionate and accessible than Personal Independence Payment (PIP) used in England and Wales, which was previously administered in Scotland by the DWP.
