Forces Widows' Pensions (Equality of Treatment) Bill

Part of Prayers – in the House of Commons at 12:54 pm on 19 June 2009.

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Photo of Kevan Jones Kevan Jones Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence) (Veterans) 12:54, 19 June 2009

But the numbers involved are different, and I shall certainly cover that matter later.

We need to deal with the principle of retrospection, and it is important to put the Bill and the matter of pension provision in historical context. Over time, the pensions of armed forces and other public sector workers have been changed and amended. Quite rightly, successive Governments have tried to improve the benefits of those schemes. Unfortunately, we are now perhaps entering a period in which they will not be enhanced, because in some cases affordability will be limited. We cannot ignore the cost to the Exchequer of the armed forces pension scheme or any other scheme.

There has been a trend of improvement, and successive Governments of different political persuasions have introduced changes. The original armed forces pension goes back to 1831. I was going to look up the 1831 Act to compare it with today's arrangements and see how things have changed, but I think that would try the House's patience a bit. The forces family pension scheme was introduced in 1952, and it set out what widows of RAF officers and warrant officers who had served after 31 August 1950 were entitled to, subject to stringent conditions. That was the first time that it had been ensured that families and widows were taken into consideration. It was a different time, and people did not have the access to pension support that we do today.

That first scheme created a category of people called class 1, who were considered for a pension when death occurred during or after service. The pensions were at a flat rate according to rank and did not vary by length of service as they do today. The rate was doubled if the death was accepted as having been due to service. That is very different from today's scheme, in which both length of service and rank are considered.

The scheme was quite harsh in a lot of ways, because it was an either-or scheme. No widow could qualify for both a pension from the Ministry of Defence on grounds that their husband's death was due to service—that was called a "special" pension—and one for other related service, which was called an "ordinary" pension. A widow qualified for state widow's benefits only subject to stringent conditions, and only if her husband's death was not due to service. The tests that were set, not just by the MOD but by the broader welfare service, were therefore harsh. The state benefit was only 10 shillings a week. For older Members, let me say that that is 50p in new money. The special pension for death due to service was more beneficial.

The widow of a man who had held the rank of warrant officer class 1 but did not serve after 31 August 1950 was entitled to the special pension only if his death was due to service, which created a class of pensionless widows. That demonstrates that, even in the early days of developing armed forces pensions, not all widows were covered. The issue that comes back time and again in the context not only of armed forces pensions, but of other pension provision, is that when we move dates or change benefits, some people lose out.