New clause 18 - Pensions for life
Armed Forces (Pensions and Compensation) Bill
9:30 am
Mr Gerald Howarth (Aldershot, Conservative)
I am talking about those who are currently widowed, for whom adequate provision has not been made in all cases. I will take the Minister through the details. I make no bones about it, the
matter is complex; it deals with the details of attributable and non-attributable part-pensions and full pensions.
I will deal with the first issue that is raised by new clause 18. Under the new scheme, all future widows will retain their widow's pension if they remarry or cohabit; but existing non-attributable widows—and those who are widowed between now and the time when the arrangements come into force—will continue to be excluded from the benefits available under the new arrangements. The purpose of the new clause is to correct that anomaly.
In December 2000, the Government introduced a concession that enabled attributable widows—sometimes known as war widows—to retain their pensions on remarriage or cohabitation. That included those currently in receipt of attributable forces family pensions—that is existing widows—but did not include those who had already remarried and who were, by definition, no longer widows. It was not retrospective. In the new scheme, that concession will be extended in future to all future widows from the date of entry into the new scheme, but it will exclude existing non-attributable widows.
The MOD estimates that there are only about 130 new non-attributable widows each year of whom about half might be expected to remarry, so the numbers of people affected by this exclusion are very small. The MOD has conceded the principle that surrendering a widow's pension on remarriage is outdated: it has included all existing and future attributable widows, and it now intends to include all future non-attributable widows. It would be a small, magnanimous and entirely appropriate step, in line with the Government's equality agenda, to include existing non-attributable widows. That would prevent the wilful and unnecessary creation of another disadvantaged small group of widows who deserve better.
There is another class of widow whose predicament would be addressed by this new clause—war widows whose husbands died before 1973 and who, upon remarriage or cohabitation, surrender their pension entitlement. Many of these ladies are now very elderly. The president of the RAF Widows Association, Jenny Green, told me that many of them have the opportunity to share their old age with a companion but are terrified of sharing their home in case they lose their pension. She said that the result is that they choose to live alone, sacrificing the joy of companionship. They see the Government dispensing the entire range of benefits to cohabiting couples now serving, while they—some of whom will be the widows of those who fought for Britain in world war two—continue to be discriminated against.