Clause 4 - Existing naval and marine pensions
Armed Forces(Pensions and Compensation) Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Andrew Robathan (Blaby, Conservative)
As my hon. Friend knows, I served in the regiment of the unfortunate young corporal who was killed in Sierra Leone. One point is that while, of course, his child and, indeed, the unfortunate girlfriend deserve support, from whatever direction, nobody asked the late corporal what he wanted. There is an assumption that he wanted a pension to be paid to his girlfriend, but who knows what that relationship was about? It is difficult for us to say. We cannot ask him because he is dead. Surely that is of great importance. If there had been a civil partnership, he could have signed up to it, but he did not and he had not had a civil marriage.