I congratulate the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) on securing this debate and on selecting this very important topic. I am well aware that it is a matter of great concern, shared by many Members of this House and in Another place, that the special position of our war widows should be recognised. The Government fully acknowledge the great debt that we owe to those women who lost their husbands fighting in the defence of freedom, or perhaps many years later as the result of their injuries. I congratulate the right hon. Member on the eloquence with which he argued their cause.

The issue has already led to a great deal of discussion—indeed, to emotion. That is perfectly understandable. I want first to concentrate on the root cause, as I perceive it, of disagreement on this matter. The main argument put forward for treating pre-1973 war widows in the same way as post-1973 widows is one of fairness. Why should those people be treated differently, the argument goes, just because they are widows of men who served before or after 31 March 1973?

To answer that question we must consider what changed on that date. In common with other employers in the public sector in the early 1970s, in 1973 the Ministry of Defence made enhancements to its armed forces occupational pension scheme. Those enhancements included increased benefits to service men discharged on medical grounds and to widows whose husbands died from causes attributable to their service. Although the scheme is technically non-contributory, adjustments are made each year in the recommendations from the Armed Forces Pay Review Body that have the effect of creating notional contributions.

Effectively, the armed forces have from March 1973 moved into a new pension scheme that gives higher benefits, but that also costs them more. If that had taken place in the private sector, or elsewhere in the public sector, no one would dream of suggesting that the enhanced benefits of a new pension scheme should be made to work retrospectively and paid out to dependants of people who never contributed to the scheme in the first place.

It is important that the House does not confuse the fact that the war pensions scheme, under which all war widows receive payments, is quite separate from the longstanding armed forces pension scheme, and it was that which changed in 1973.

The war pensions scheme is administered by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security. It is not confined to members of the armed forces and their dependants and it provides pensions and other special payments to anyone suffering disabilities or to the dependants of anyone who has died as a result of war injuries or, in the case of the armed forces, from any cause that is attributable to service in the forces.

Of course, arguments against applying the post-1973 provisions of the armed forces pension scheme retrospectively have been deployed before in this House and I can put it no better than an earlier Minister who was responsible for these matters. He said: The main factor in the Government's decision not to equalise the benefits of the War Pensions Scheme and the Armed Forces Pension Scheme is the essential difference between the two Schemes. He went on to say: The possibility of introducing retrospective payments into the Armed Forces Pension Scheme has been considered … However, it is a standard principle of occupational pension schemes in both the public and private sectors that any improvement will apply only to those, or the widows of those, actually serving at the time of its introduction.— [Official Report, 18 December 1975: Vol. 902, c. 1760.] The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe might recognise those words. He certainly should because it was he who uttered them.