Lords amendment considered.

I inform the House that privilege is involved in Lords amendment No. 2C. If the House agrees to the amendment, I shall arrange for the necessary entry to be made in the Journal.

After Clause 6

Lords amendment: No 2C

I beg to move, That this House
disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

It is ironic that the only remaining issue standing in the way of the Bill has nothing whatever to do with the new pensions and compensation arrangements. By my reckoning, this is the seventh time during the passage of the Bill that there has been a debate in either House on the issue of post-retirement benefits of widows and widowers. This House has twice voted resoundingly against adding a provision of the sort proposed to the Bill—on Report, on 6 May, by 252 to 132 votes, and on 20 October, the last time that this House discussed the issue, by 270 votes to 181.

No one would dispute the figures, but is the Minister saying that because the Government Whips can get their people to vote as the Government want, that carries the argument on merit?

The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I respond to that during the course of my opening remarks. To put the issue into perspective, I was about to say that the House of Lords had twice voted in favour of a provision, once by a single vote, and most recently on 2 November. Members will recall that

"a charge on public funds"— estimated by the Government Actuary at about £50 million for the Ministry of Defence alone and at between £300 million and £500 million across all public service schemes—was the clear reason for the House's refusal of the Lords' previous position. That remains the Government position and indeed, I hope and expect, the view of the House.

We do not think that the figures would be reduced in the major way indicated in the context of attempts by the Opposition, in this place and then in the Lords, to limit the impact of the amendment by inserting age thresholds for payment of 70 and then 75. Clearly, it was thought that, in each case, such a constraint would make the amendment a lot less expensive and, therefore, more palatable to the Government. I want to disabuse the House on that point.

I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way. Incidentally, I was sorry to hear the recent announcement that he will be retiring from the House at the end of this Parliament.

Does the Minister really want to pursue the post-retirement pensions analogy for the Ministry of Defence and other elements of the public service? Surely, the point is that members of the armed forces tend to retire when they are much younger, so the problem bears on them disproportionately. There is no reason why there should be a read-across. Age limits could deal with the problem in a way that would not read across to other parts of the public service.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I shall deal with his remarks in the context of my contribution, as we have only a short time for this debate.

Most widows' and widowers' pensions come into payment only when the recipients are in their 70s, so little is likely to be saved by introducing what would, in any case, be an entirely arbitrary age point. The other point about the proposed amendment is that it is just not possible to ring-fence the armed forces on that issue, which brings me to the read-across point made by the hon. Gentleman. We have given that question careful consideration and I have revisited it in the light of the clear concerns expressed both in this place and in the Lords. Any concession to the widows and widowers of service personnel would inevitably read across to the other public service schemes, where individuals frequently leave service, for all kinds of reasons, before normal retirement age.

Against that background, it is disappointing to say the least that their lordships have not heeded the clearly expressed will of this House, so I invite the House today to send a strong signal to the Lords on the matter. The stakes could not be higher. I must make it clear that the Bill will not be able to proceed if the Lords insist on an amendment on post-retirement widows' and widowers' benefits. The Government have no provision within their programme for the £300 million to £500 million that might be involved, and could not justify making such provision.

This is but one of a number of equally deserving pension legacy issues, which affect not only the public services, but many people who were employed in the private sector. To address them all would cost many billions of pounds. Successive Governments of all persuasions have concluded that a remedy would be unaffordable.

If their lordships were to insist on their amendment, or something like it, on Wednesday, there would be no realistic chance of the Bill coming on to the statute book. In that case, the significant improvements to the pension scheme, which have long been sought by serving personnel and are strongly supported by the chiefs of staff, and also by many veterans organisations, including the Forces Pension Society and the Royal British Legion, would be lost; as would the benefits under the new compensation scheme, of lump sum payments and a new deal for the more seriously disabled. I cannot believe that Mr. Howarth would welcome that outcome, even though I know that some of his Opposition colleagues have shown no such reservations, as we saw the last time we debated the matter.

Given the number of times that we have debated the issue, I shall not take the House through all the arguments again. The Government's strong opposition to the proposal is clearly on the record: the cost implications of the amendment are too far-reaching to allow any Government to make such a change. Furthermore, despite what the hon. Gentleman said during our last debate, I doubt, in the very unlikely event he were standing in my place, that he would take a different view. Those who continue to support the amendment must face up to the very real and substantial cost implications of the change.

No one has grounds for saying that the Government have been insensitive to the needs of our older veterans or widows. Indeed, my noble Friend Lord Bach announced in the Lords on 8 September a tightly-defined concession for the pre-1973 war widows, reflecting the very special circumstances of that group of generally elderly and relatively poorly off war pensioners. That concession was targeted on that deserving group, which the War Widows Association has regularly highlighted for special treatment, and will cost the Government more than £20 million. However, that is as far as we can afford to go and further than any previous Government have gone.

Does the Minister accept that most of his argument turns on cost? Would he not care to consider the fact that, for example, the Public Accounts Committee has made some pretty trenchant remarks about some failures in relation to Ministry of Defence costings and accountancy? Therefore, bearing in mind that the sum of £300 million to £500 million may seem a lot by comparison with the issues and principles at stake, it pales into insignificance when compared to the very considerable amount of inefficiency that has been occasionally highlighted by the PAC, although I should like to add one thing—

Order. That is sufficient for one bite of the cherry.

I thought that we were just getting to the interesting bit, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I say to Mr. Cash that the MOD has a defined budget, and we rightly have to live within it. The measure would involve extra expenditure, and there is no provision for it in our current thinking. Of course, we take into account what the Public Accounts Committee has said, and we had a very lively debate on procurement just 10 days ago in this House, when all those issues were properly and fully examined.

I do not believe that the Lords amendment can achieve what its proposer is seeking. There were no pensions before 1975 for those with less than 22 years' service as another rank and 16 years' service as an officer. In other pension schemes, arrangements were even less generous, as no pensions were payable with less than 40 years' service. The measure would therefore benefit very few of those who may have decided to delay marriage out of deference to the constraints of service. We would expect the main beneficiaries to be those remarrying later in life after either the death of the spouse or divorce. There can be no compelling case for the special treatment of those in that group who are in the same position as many others across the public services.

Overall, I strongly believe that the Government have put together a very good package of pensions and compensation benefits for our armed forces. The improvements to the pension scheme have been made in response to concerns about the current arrangements that have been voiced over the years by serving personnel, including many former Chiefs of the Defence Staff and the ex-service community.

I hope that the Lords will not insist on their position, but let us just consider what is at risk if they do: a pension scheme based on final salary, against the general trend seen outside; a very significant improvement to widows' and dependants' benefits; the extension of benefits to unmarried partners, including same-sex relationships; the introduction of common terms for officers and other ranks; and a new deal for the more seriously disabled, significantly improving their benefits.

As I have said before in the House, I am in no doubt that the new pension and compensation schemes are a good deal for service personnel and that it would be quite wrong to tear up the new schemes now and start again, thus asking the armed forces to wait yet longer for proper, modern employment terms. I am therefore again asking the House to send a clear signal to the House of Lords about the wishes of the elected House on this matter. I hope that, in the light of the debate and in the knowledge that we could not allow the Bill to proceed if it contained the Lords amendment, the Lords will agree that it is now time to accept the will of this, the elected House, and allow the Bill to proceed to Royal Assent later this week. I therefore ask the House to reject Lords amendment No. 2C.

First, may I point out that we have only a relatively short time to debate the amendment? That has nothing to do with the Opposition; the Government have set an arbitrary limit of an hour for the debate. I hope that that will not result in those who wish to participate being unable to do so.

After months of detailed deliberations on the Bill in the House, in Committee and in the other place, the Government now seem likely to get their Bill pretty much in the form that they originally intended. It is disappointing that they have proved unwilling to consider any form of compromise on a number of key issues, including the burden of proof, on which the Select Committee on Defence offered a very sensible compromise solution, the reduced early departure payments scheme and the refusal to allow our servicemen and women to earn a full career pension.

Sadly, only on the issue of independent oversight did the Government accede to Opposition demands by giving an oversight role to the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. Of course, we welcome that. As the Minister said, the only outstanding issue between the two Houses is the provision for the payment of a widow's pension to the oldest of those widows of post-retirement marriages whose spouses' service took place before 1978.

I was very interested to hear the Minister produce the figures that he used, because he produced them completely out of the air—there was no back-up or substance to them whatever. He does a disservice to the House in so doing. The Government Actuary's Department and the Ministry of Defence refuse to release the assumptions on which those costings are based, so it is very difficult to make accurate projections of the financial cost of the amendment. However, as the Minister knows, the Forces Pension Society has done some work on the issue, and it estimates that the provision would cost in the order of £7 million. I will come in a moment to the read-across to other Departments. For the Minister to suggest, as we sit here in the week of the Armistice commemorations, that these people are somehow not particularly deserving and that there ought to be a read-across to every other Department will, frankly, not wash.

rose—

I will give way to the Minister if he wishes to repent.

I am not prepared to allow the hon. Gentleman to get away with such an outrageous and disgraceful comment. I have never said that the widows and widowers were not a deserving group. I was merely pointing out the specific issue in relation to widows, Government policy and wider pension policy.

Well, I am afraid that that does not stack up, and I will explain to the Minister in words of one syllable in a moment why it does not.

As I say, £7 million is hardly a king's ransom. Furthermore, the Minister knows that those who have been seeking to put right this anomaly have made genuine efforts to give the Government the opportunity to put it right. They have made plenty of efforts both here and, in particular, in another place, where Lord Freyberg introduced the amendment and secured the support of their lordships in the vote. They reduced the entitlement and narrowed it down to those over the age of 75 in an endeavour to meet the Government part way. Indeed, as one of my hon. Friends pointed out to me a moment ago, when we calculate these figures, we also have to take into account the fact that there will be some saving in social security. Although these pensions will be payable out of the public purse, many of those who would be the beneficiaries if the amendment were accepted are currently in receipt of social security payments. Given that they would no longer apply, there would be a counter-balancing saving to the public purse.

I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me for making a slightly ungracious intervention. He must bear it in mind that he is advocating something that has been rejected by all Governments for all time. Will he tell us why the argument on read-across does not apply? If we retrospectively change the law on pensions, why will we not be asked to reopen the matter in many other cases for younger age groups?

I shall come on to read-across in a moment. It is common ground among us that the matter is one of several legacy issues that Governments of both political complexions have found it difficult to address. We believe that it is now time to address the matter—we suggested others for consideration, but we have narrowed them down to one. I hope that the fact that the proposal has found favour in the other place will carry some weight with my right hon. and learned—and, if I may also say so, noble—Friend. Let me remind him that Lord Freyberg's amendment, which would limit the entitlement to those over 75, was carried by 149 votes to 126. Among those who supported the measure was the most recently retired Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Boyce. Many of us would argue that he was one of the most distinguished people who have had the honour to serve in that post, and he has made no secret of his worries about several issues, of which this is one.

rose—

I shall give way to the Minister in a moment.

If the Government give life peerages to all and sundry, but cannot find 150 people to turn up and support them on this measure, they clearly either have given peerages to the wrong people—perhaps they did not give the Labour party enough money—or could not persuade them of the argument. Frankly, I think that the latter is the case.

That was a cheap shot—we are hearing plenty of those at the moment. The hon. Gentleman might like to reflect on the number of Labour peers who voted in that Division and the number of Conservative peers. I am sure that he has the figures to hand, but if not, I can certainly tell him.

I have not done a detailed analysis on those who voted, although I note that at least one Labour peer voted with Lord Freyberg, who is, of course, a Cross Bencher. Cross Benchers, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats supported the amendment, and I think that most of those who voted against it were members of the Labour party. However, the Government have created many Labour peers, so if they do not turn up to vote, either they are not earning their corn, or they do not believe in the Government's policy.

I doubt that I am alone in finding it pretty grubby that the day after Remembrance Sunday, the Government's message to widows who married after their spouses had left the service of the Crown is, "We realise that your spouse risked his life for this country, but we are sorry that, as his widow, you are not entitled to anything from his service." Many such widows aged over 75 will have been married to men who served in the second world war, so hon. Members on both sides of the House and the British people will share our dismay at the Government's refusal to make such a small provision for some of the oldest and most vulnerable of our forces' widows.

I cited two cases the last time that we discussed the Bill, and I shall cite another today. A lady from Oxfordshire said:

"We married in 1977 after my husband retired, but he unfortunately died in 1991. Consequently I get no pension. My husband served for 25 years in the RAF and was flying as a pilot throughout the last war. He was awarded the AFC and Bar and was mentioned in dispatches. He like many, many more was prepared to give his life if necessary."

That is the tenor of many letters that have been sent to organisations that champion the cause.

The Minister sometimes adopts a hectoring manner and it has been suggested to me that he has said that if he fails to get his way on the matter, he will pull the Bill. Indeed, he made it abundantly clear to the House that that remained his position.

Surely there is a second argument besides the strong one that my hon. Friend puts. The armed forces are in a unique position, with the possible exception of the diplomatic corps, in which people are moved about quickly and sent abroad for long periods. As a result, many personnel have less opportunity for marriage. Above all, unlike all other forms of public service, they typically retire in their 40s, so half their life's pension, which they acquired in the armed forces, cannot be read-across to a later marriage. The problem does not usually arise for someone who retires at a later age in any other part of public service.

My hon. Friend is right and I am grateful to him for that. Hon. Members will know that it was almost frowned on to get married too early. The practice was that people married after they retired rather than when they moved around the world in service.

The Minister made it crystal clear again that if the House votes against the amendment and if it is carried in the other place, he will pull the Bill. That is as churlish as it is unlikely.

Let me clarify something. I said that if the Lords insisted on the amendment, the Bill would be very different. Conservative Members criticised the Government in Committee because the Bill was enabling legislation, to be followed by secondary legislation. It would clearly be wrong for this matter, which does not need legislation, to be in the Bill.

The Minister blows a hole in the Bill by making it crystal clear that it is essentially enabling legislation, as I made clear at the outset. There is some consistency in his argument that to include the measure would go against the Bill's general principle. In that case, we would be delighted for him to say that the Government will introduce proposals in a statutory instrument to achieve the same effect if the amendment is not insisted on in another place.

I intend to respond to the debate in full and will give my thoughts about the future then.

The Minister will need to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if he wishes to respond. We had his definitive statement. I find it astonishing that he is suggesting that something is up his sleeve that he wishes to impart to the House at the end of the debate. If he has good news for us, perhaps he will kindly tell us now so that I can properly respond.

Clearly, the Minister has nothing to say. You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will have to consider whether there is any point in him winding up if the Government have nothing additional to offer. It will be unfortunate if he imparts new information that he was unwilling to give at the start of the debate, without enabling us to comment on it.

As I said, it is as churlish as it is unlikely that the Minister will pull the Bill. He would look pretty silly explaining how a small group of widows, their cause championed in this House and another place, had so overwhelmed the Ministry of Defence that it was forced to deprive tomorrow's armed forces of the myriad benefits he has claimed the Bill will provide.

The Government have cited a policy of no retrospection as grounds for resisting the amendment. In 1989, the then Secretary of State for Defence, Tom King, agreed a £40 a week tax-free payment to pre-1973 widows without any implication for retrospection in other areas. That provision was said to have been made for a "uniquely deserving category". Surely those widows of post-retirement marriages over the age of 75 today, like the lady from Oxfordshire whose case I quoted, should qualify as another uniquely deserving category. We were talking about read-across earlier, but it was not an issue when my noble Friend Lord King made that special gesture. The Ministry of Defence was clearly not telling him that if he made that concession, there would be a read-across to every other Government Department. It is unacceptable and outrageous that the Ministry and its officials should insist that if we look after a unique category of people, similar provisions should be made for every other Department so that an expenditure of £7 million on that small group would become £500 million across Government.

Would my hon. Friend equip me with an argument that I can put to the widows of, for example, firemen, prison officers, policemen or teachers, and explain why they should not have the same benefit?

Given the nature of my right hon. and learned Friend's constituency, which includes many Royal Air Force airfields and former RAF airfields, he will know that there is something unique about the people who fought in the second world war and whose widows would be the beneficiaries of the measure. I hope that I do not need to spell out the argument for him, because I am sure that it is apparent to him.

On the question of retrospection, there is plenty of precedent to show that the MOD has not needed to argue against retrospection in the past. More recently, the Civil Partnership Bill provides retrospective benefits dating back to 1988. If retrospective benefits are okay for homosexual couples, why is that not the case for the widows of men who fought for our freedom? I confess that I am surprised that the Minister has chosen to snub the widows as his parting shot. As he activates his ejector seat and parachutes back into the world of personal finance—my assumption may be unreasonable—which was comprehensively mucked up by the Government, he will surely want to be remembered with affection by that small but valiant group. The sum of £7 million, as well as being wholly justified, is an entirely affordable option. If the Government continue to be pigheaded and stubborn, next year's incoming Conservative Government will put the matter right and make provision for that deserving group.

I shall conclude by paying tribute to Lord Freyberg, who kindly mentioned me last week in the debate in the other place. We ought to leave the last word to him, because he concluded that debate and won the hearts of Members of the upper House. I hope that by repeating his remarks I can win the hearts of Members of the House of Commons:

"I should like to remind the House that those affected by this issue are mostly widows of Second World War servicemen who fought for a pensionable length of time—for around two decades—and endured great hardship without being able to provide for their wives in the event of their death, through no fault of their own and in contrast to contemporary colleagues in less arduous positions. I hope the House will grasp this late opportunity to help such a vulnerable group."—[Hansard, House of Lords, 2 November 2004; Vol. 666, c. 181.]

Amen to that—I hope that this House, too, will grasp it.

I shall make only a few comments, because I want to ensure that the Minister has time to enlighten us about how he will bring our proceedings to an end. We have discussed the Bill seven times, and I hope that he agrees that when primary legislation is introduced it is not just a time to look forward and lay out plans for the years and decades to come, but to address perceived injustices in systems that have been in place for some time. There is widespread acceptance of the fact that certain injustices ought to be put right by the Bill. The group that we are discussing falls into that category.

I shall say a little about why the Government say they cannot accept the Lords amendment. The first reason is retrospection. The only way in which perceived injustices from the past can be put right is through retrospective legislation. There are examples of the Government doing that. Mr. Howarth gave one recent example and there are others. It would be churlish of the Government to rely on the argument that they cannot act retrospectively.

A more important consideration is cost. Bearing in mind all the resources at the Government's disposal, we should by this stage have some clear actuarial figures to show what the measure would cost. The Minister says the cost could be substantially more than £7 million, but we do not know how much more, how the cost was calculated or whether it includes social security benefits that will not become payable. Given the length of time that we have been considering the Bill, there should be something rather more solid for us to debate, rather than our bandying figures across the Chamber.

The cost depends on the extent of the read-across. It is difficult to quantify the cost until we know the extent of the read-over to other public service pension schemes.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman makes my point exactly. That would have enabled us to define the extent of the read-across, and would have served the House in two respects. It would have given us a more solid estimate of the cost and provided boundaries to the read-across. As I understand it—I do not possess anything like the legal experience of the right hon. and learned Gentleman—there would have to be some comparability among the various schemes to which read-across applied. As has been pointed out, aspects of the armed forces pension scheme are fundamentally different from other public service pension schemes.

It would have helped us—perhaps that is why we do not have the figures—to know, rather than to guess, the extent of the read-across and the costs. It is almost impossible for us to debate these matters without more solid figures. It is a great shame that, after all this time, we do not have a clearer idea of the Government's views and the basis for their contentions.

I accept, however, that the Bill is valuable in other respects and I would not want to see it fall. Many aspects of it have received support across the House. The Government have missed the opportunity to address a widely perceived injustice, and it is a pity that that is being used as a hostage to fortune in the proceedings on the Bill. If the Minister indicates that the Government are willing to reconsider the matter and introduce a statutory instrument to address it, that will be welcome. Nevertheless, I am still minded to press this relatively small issue.

I rise with some disquiet, as I dislike disagreeing with my hon. Friend Mr. Howarth on a matter of considerable sensitivity. I recognise that the group of people under discussion deserve well of the country. At the same time, one must ask some questions of principle. I was a member of a Government who, for many years, declined to reopen the question. We were satisfied that the reasons for not doing so were sound; they are two in number.

One should be very cautious about reopening contractual arrangements retrospectively. Contractual arrangements are based on a contract—certain payments to obtain certain benefits—and one should be slow to give benefits for which contributions have not been paid. Once one starts to do that, one abandons the basic rule that one should not make retrospective changes and opens oneself to a range of demands with huge public spending implications.

My right hon. and learned Friend is right that one must exercise a great deal of caution, but I put it to him that such issues have been reopened on a number of occasions. He will remember that Tony Barber, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, made an ex gratia payment to war widows, and I have cited the individual, special case that occurred when Lord King of Bridgwater was Secretary of State for Defence—my right hon. and learned Friend was a Minister at that time and, indeed, may have been a Cabinet Minister. Those at the top end of the age bracket—in that case, over-75s—have a long history of special consideration, which we are trying to introduce here.

The fact that my hon. Friend has identified only two cases—I am not saying that other cases do not exist—after, I suspect, considerable research, indicates the caution with which Governments have approached that proposition over the years. If one reopens contractual arrangements for over-75s, one immediately faces the question of why an arbitrary age limit should be imposed—why not 70 or 65? Once one breaches the principle of not making retrospective changes, one opens oneself to considerable demands with huge public spending implications.

My right hon. and learned Friend referred to comparisons with people in other activities. Does he apply that principle to those in the fire service or other dangerous activities, irrespective of whether the widowing took place as a result of that activity's danger or merely because that occupation is dangerous in general terms? I am sure that he recognises that the war widows situation arises explicitly when a war widow, such as my mother, is widowed as a result of her husband being killed in action.

However, that is not true of the amendment, although it is, of course, true in some cases. The amendment does not deal with such a tragic situation; it deals with a wholly different situation in which a person in the armed forces continues to serve for many years and does not die in service, which is different from my hon. Friend's example.

One must face this question: if one makes such a change in respect of a deserving group of people, what does one say to widows in comparable circumstances—for example, the widows of policemen or firemen who die in service? Indeed, leaving aside dangerous occupations, what does one say to the widows of those in public service? By making such a change, one accepts changes to one kind of pension provision, and I find it difficult to resist the argument that pensioners or prospective pensioners married to other public servants should be entitled to the same benefits. I ask myself whether one can ring fence the surviving spouses of servicemen and have great difficultly in defining that principle.

We have done it, and I pointed out the case in which it was done.

The case has been made, but it is not a justification in principle. My hon. Friend must give us a principled argument as to how one can properly make a distinction between the surviving spouses of servicemen and the surviving spouses of other individuals in thousands of other public sector occupations. it is very difficult to make that distinction as a matter of principle. As it happens, I would like to be able to benefit that group of surviving spouses but we have to understand the consequences of that. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot has not dealt satisfactorily either with the point about retrospection or with the point about read-across. Unless he can do so, I shall not support him.

Perhaps I could begin where Mr. Hogg ended. There seems to be some confusion in the House in relation to the suggestion by Mr. Howarth about the single change that Tom King made when he was Secretary of State for Defence. I want to try to clarify that. There was a change to the war pension scheme, which is not an occupational scheme. It does not raise the same issues that we have debated this afternoon. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman pointed out, the benefit is not in relation to the terms of service, which were set separately for service personnel at the time of their service, and there is no direct pay adjustment.

Furthermore, the war widows already had an entitlement to benefit in 1989 and all that happened was that the value of the benefit was increased for pre-1973 widows. That was an honourable thing for the Secretary of State at the time to do. It was also the right thing to do. The post-retirement marriages measure that we are debating today and that has been debated in the House of Lords would introduce a completely new entitlement. That is why I ask the House to disagree with their lordships. It is a completely different area. It is not right to make a comparison with the change that Tom King made at that time.

I wanted to start on a point of consensus in winding up this short debate. I welcome the comments of the hon. Member for Aldershot about our inclusion of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body and of Mr. Breed in relation to the Bill in general. I want to say how much I have enjoyed the "trio debates" that we have had for the best part of eight months. When this Bill got into Committee in February, I did not expect us to be debating it in the last week of the Session, but there we are.

I want to try to make it absolutely clear where I stand in relation to post-retirement widows. The House will recall from our previous debate that I had a meeting with Lord Freyberg and the Forces Pension Society. I hope that I can build on the comments that I made then with some further comments. I make it clear that I remain open-minded on the possibility of a measure that may make further improvements for particularly vulnerable groups of armed forces widows, in particular some of those who are older and less well provided for. As I have already indicated to the society, I am prepared to meet it and Lord Freyberg once the Bill has received Royal Assent to consider the issues raised throughout our debates. I hope that the House will accept that commitment from me on behalf of the Government and, in consequence of it, will allow the House to disagree with the Lords and send a clear message back to their lordships on this issue.

I am aware that the Minister had a meeting with Lord Freyberg and others. I find it surprising that the Minister, having said at the outset of the debate that, if the amendment were insisted upon, the Bill would have to be pulled and all these benefits to the armed forces would be lost, chooses at the end of the debate, when there is no real opportunity for us to reply, to say that he is open-minded about it and willing to reconsider.

If the Minister is saying that he is prepared to consider righting this injustice at some point in the near future, that is fine; but if he is saying that he is prepared to talk, but in fact there is nothing new to say, frankly, I do not see what purpose there is in his talking further. Can he give us some more definite commitment?

I have given a clear commitment both today and in what I have said previously. My words have been carefully chosen and reflect a further conversation that I had with the Forces Pension Society last week. I am saying that I am open-minded on the possibility of a measure that might make further improvements for especially vulnerable groups of armed forces widows, and in particular some of those who are older and less well provided for. It seems to me that that is clear and unambiguous, and it is a matter that we can discuss afterwards.

The hon. Gentleman knows, as we have already debated it today, that this is an enabling measure. It is right and proper to discuss these issues. He said to me in Committee when the matter was raised on, I think, 22 February, that it was a probing amendment. We did not divide on it then and he did not appear to wish to pursue it further. That is a normal consequence of House business, but in these circumstances I am trying to make it clear to the House and to the other place that there are opportunities for further discussions, and I am not ruling anything out and remain open-minded. He will simply have to accept that that is as far as I can go in making a commitment today.

I am afraid that, from what I have heard so far, I do not feel sufficiently confident that there is a real intention to deal with this issue. I welcome the idea that the Minister is prepared for further negotiations, but I find what he has said so far unpersuasive, and unless he can give a certain commitment I am likely to seek to divide the House on this issue, because he has shown nothing but intransigence thus far, so I cannot place huge reliance on his delivering if he comes to further negotiations.

I did not use the word "negotiations", and I reject the charge of intransigence. That was not a sensible point to make, and in fact the concession that we made to the pre-1973 widows, at a cost of more than £20 million, was welcomed by the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall and should perhaps have been welcomed by the hon. Gentleman, too.

I want to respond briefly to two points, the first of which concerns the Civil Partnerships Bill and retrospection—the two are not the same, and it is worth my placing on the record why that is the case. The regulations under that Bill will provide equality, as they will allow registered same-sex partners to accrue survivor pensions in public service schemes from 1988. That puts registered same-sex couples in the same position as married couples. This new legal status is akin to marriage and inevitably produces corresponding benefit rights. That is different from the issues relating to any retrospective improvements for pension benefits that have arisen in debates on our Bill both today and previously.

Secondly, it is simply not true that the Lords amendment would cost £7 million. The Government Actuary has confirmed that limiting the threshold for payments to age 75—I made this point in my opening remarks—does not reduce significantly the one-off cost, which I have stated clearly throughout this debate is in the region of £50 million to the Ministry of Defence, and the read-across of that is the other figures that we have heard: £300 million to £500 million.

Are those costs net of social security payments that will be saved?

It really was not worth my giving way. The Government Actuary works the figures out, and I have given the House a clear understanding of them. It is not £7 million; it is much, much more. Reading across to the public services and rectifying all the legacies, we would be talking about billions of pounds. I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman would expect any Government to present such a case.

We have now discussed this matter on seven occasions. I believe that the House should disagree with the Lords, and I urge it to do so by rejecting the amendment.

Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment:-

The House divided: Ayes 260, Noes 160.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Lords amendment disagreed to.

Committee appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to certain of their amendments to the Bill: Liz Blackman, Mr. Colin Breed, Mr. Ivor Caplin, Vernon Coaker and Mr. Gerald Howarth; Mr. Ivor Caplin to be the Chairman of the Committee; three to be the quorum of the Committee.—[Vernon Coaker.]

To withdraw immediately.

Reasons for disagreeing to certain Lords amendments reported, and agreed to; to be communicated to the Lords.