Armed Forces (Pensions and Grants)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 20 October 1942.

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Photo of Mr Vernon Bartlett Mr Vernon Bartlett , Bridgwater

I am afraid that the speech I make will be more than usually inadequate, because, having just come back to work after being unwell, I have not been able to work out any speech in detail, as I would have liked to do. I want very warmly to support everything that has been said by the hon. Member for Basset-law (Mr. Bellenger). There are two categories, in particular, concerning which I would ask the Minister to give us further and more encouraging details. One hears of very many cases of men who are killed while they are out on evening passes or while they are away on leave. It seems to me that once a man has become a servant of the State in the particular way in which he does when he joins the Armed Forces, the State then has an obligation towards him, and the fact that he may be killed in a lorry accident when coming back from an evening's leave in the town is no reason why the State should say it has no financial responsibilities towards him. That seems to me to be a completely scandalous position. We are told it is good for a soldier's morale that when he can get away from camp on short evening leave he should do so. Yet, if there happens to be some accident while he is out on a pass, as I understand the position and as cases that have come to me show, his widow is told that she is not entitled to a pension.

There is, then, the category of the man who is passed into the Army A.1, and who within a few months is passed out as permanently unfit, and dies a very short time afterwards. Unless he has done a substantial period of service and unless it can be proved that during that period of service the state of his health was very seriously aggravated, his widow is not entitled to a pension. Surely, once a man is passed A.1 into one of the Fighting Services, ipso facto the State has a responsibility for him. A case was brought to my attention not long ago. In this case, in the end, the Minister did find himself able to grant a pension. It was the case of a man who had been passed A.1 into the Army, although it was quite clear to anybody who knew him he was not fit. He was out of the Army within less than 3 months and within a year he died, and for a long time the Minister said he was not entitled to a pension. Surely, the shorter the man's period of service the more obvious it is that the state of his health has been aggravated by military life, and there- fore, I should have thought that the obligation of the State was all the more obvious. I think that in those two categories to which I have referred the Minister should be able to give us some satisfactory assurance. In dealing with these matters, we are in great difficulty because we do not know now about the latitude which is given to the Minister under the Royal Warrant. From the Warrant as I read it, it is left to the good-will and judgment of the Minister to decide whether or not a pension can be granted.

The Minister gives us the impression—if he will allow me to say so—that he is a Minister who is working very loyally in the interests of the State, or rather of one particular section of the State—that is to say, he is very anxious, and rightly anxious, that there should not be a waste of public money, and so on. As I see things, he is a man who works very closely with the Treasury, whose job it is to see that a lot of money is not unnecessarily expended. We often hear about watertight and rival compartments in the State. I sometimes wonder whether the Minister of Pensions is not the worst enemy that the Minister of Information has in this country at the present time. There is not a town and hardly a village in the country where there is not some pensions case, where a pension has been granted very late after an enormous amount of unhappy wrangling or where it has been refused altogether. Ministry of Information speakers go round the country saying what a grand world we are going to build after the war—although they are not allowed to talk too much about the future—and trying to keep up the morale of the people; but in every place there is that case, that dirty, mean little instance—I do not accuse the Minister personally, for I believe that probably he does interpret the Warrant as generously as he can—where, somebody has made the ultimate sacrifice and his dependants are left in absolute destitution or misery, or are subjected to a means test of one sort or another. That is not good enough. It is true that it is serving the interests of the Treasury, but it is directly against the interests of the maintenance of morale. I beg the Minister to give us a little more assurance and proof that in all these cases he does show the utmost generosity that he can; in other words, that he does work as closely as he can with the Ministry of Information, and does not simply think, "I am working with the Treasury and I will see that no money goes out of the public purse if I can possibly avoid it, even though I spread alarm and despondency in the country."