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Forces Widows' Pensions (Equality of Treatment) Bill

As usual, the hon. Gentleman makes a useful intervention. If he uses the great services of the Library, he will find the information, but I do not have the answer at the moment. The key point is that whenever a new pension is introduced, there are always winners and losers. That happens today, too, and I will say more about that later. There were stringent conditions relating not only to the husband's length of service, but to age, marriage and even the age difference between the man and the woman. The system was far from simple. The main requirement was that the marriage took place before retirement or discharge. The resultant pension was awarded subject to a means test. As the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) suggested, the state pension was taken into account. Until 1939, for the RAF, both types of pension—special and ordinary—were paid out of the MoD vote. However, the responsibility for funding a pension for death due to service in the case of those who served after 3 September 1939 was then assumed by the Ministry of Pensions, which would be the Department for Work and Pensions today. The pension was called a war award. As has been said, where the money comes from is important. It is Government money, but we must ensure that there are not burdensome pressures, not only on the general Exchequer but on the defence budget . Even back then, there were competing demands for funds. The rate of pensions was not altered until 1950, but increases were awarded, with other service pensions, under legislation in 1944 and 1947. Improvements in benefits were considered after the post-war pay and pensions review and resulted in a new benefit called the family pension scheme, which was introduced by Command Paper 8741, payable from 1 December 1952. It relates to those who served in the armed services after 31 August 1950. It is interesting to note that the then Government considered whether improved family schemes should be financed by a contribution from the serviceman. I think that the right hon. Member for East Hampshire referred to that. We must remember that the schemes that we are considering are not funded. The individuals do not make contributions, although I accept that under the current scheme, people's pay awards are taken into consideration as an abatement, which sometimes causes concern and resentment in parts of the armed forces. It is sometimes difficult to explain the figures when calculating wage awards. It was decided in 1950 that the non-contributory scheme should continue because applying a contributory scheme to the services presented too many difficulties. The right hon. Gentleman said that servicemen and women are a unique group, and I agree. However, there is some crossover with the police and fire service. Again, their schemes are non-contributory and those individuals put their lives at risk, but I accept that the armed forces are unique, and there is nothing comparable that we could consider. However, anyone who is involved in local government will know that those two schemes, which are both unfunded, are under a lot of pressure. The main changes to the scheme were introduced for those who served after 31 August 1950. The new scheme again demonstrated that pensions policy evolves, with the introduction of new measures, which were not retrospective, including the abolition of some of the restrictive conditions of the former scheme. The pension for widows of men below the rank of WO2 who had served after 31 August 1950 also qualified, subject to length of service. Again, we get a sense of dates being introduced that improved benefits, but those benefits were not made retrospective. Payments of a reduced pension called a modified pension—this is where the length of service and other conditions were satisfied—were made from MOD votes to widows who qualified for the war award from the then Department of Health and Social Security. Another important change was that the conditions requiring marriage to have taken place before retirement or discharge were relaxed, only to recognise the re-employment service given during 1939 to 1940, so that if a serviceman qualified for a reassessed pension and his date of marriage preceded the date of the completion of his re-employment, his widow could be considered for a pension. The length-of-service conditions were also changed. In particular, the length-of-service conditions for the payment of a forces pension to a widow of a man below the rank of WO1 who died after discharge were: 22 years for a man at the rank of WO2 or a flight sergeant; 27 years for a sergeant; and 32 years for a corporal or below. That created a second category of pensionless widows, because the husband would be receiving a pension regardless of rank if he had completed 22 years' service after 19 December 1945, but only if he had completed a longer term than that required by the widows regulations. Again, the system changed, with the consequence that widows whose husbands did not meet the new criteria did not receive a pension. The legislation covering rates has also changed over time. The ordinary pension was paid at a flat rate according to rank, with variations relating to length of service for widows of men below the rank of WO1. The flat rates attracted increases under subsequent measures to increase pensions, and they formed the basis of what was called the minimum rate, for which any widow whose husband had retired or been discharged before 31 March 1973 could qualify, where the benefits to which they were entitled under other provisions were smaller. The introduction of the modified pension was necessary because it became obvious that a widow qualifying for an ordinary pension plus state pension benefits, which had by then improved, could be financially better off than a widow of a man whose death was due to service, but who was receiving only the war award, as it was still known. Modified pensions were approved for war award widows who otherwise qualified for an ordinary pension. Again, there was a flat rate by rank, which was equal to approximately half the ordinary pension for officers, to two thirds of the pension for those at the rank of WO1 and to the special rates for lower ranks. Those pensions also qualified for the increase in benefits. The war award benefits paid by the then Department of Health and Social Security were related to rank. There was no minimum length of service required, and the date of marriage was not a barrier if death occurred after 3 September 1939. Some would argue that that illustrates two systems working side by side, possibly resulting in unfairness because some people qualified while others did not. Perhaps this demonstrates the long history of unfairness that has built up in the system over many years. In 1958, the Grigg committee's recommendations were accepted by the Government and were introduced and payable from 1 April 1959 for widows of men who had died after 4 November 1958, regardless of when their service ended. However, the changes did not benefit the widows of men below the rank of warrant officer who were discharged before 31 August 1950, or the widows of men discharged after that date who had died before the introduction of the changes of 5 November 1958 and who had not previously qualified. Again, this is a change that some would argue disadvantaged certain individuals. The revised provisions at that stage gave widows an ordinary pension of a third of their husband's original retirement pay or pension, or a third of the invaliding pension for which he would have been eligible if he had died while serving. The modified pension, where death was due to service, was set at half the ordinary rate. Widows' pension attracted the benefit of an increased measure introduced since the date of discharge or death in service. The minimum rate could be paid as an alternative, where that was more advantageous. It soon became clear that, because the new benefits were awarded to the widows of men who had died after November 1958, regardless of their date of retirement or discharge, anomalies were being created between the flat rate and the two-thirds award given to the widows of men with exactly the same service record and dates. So the widows of two men who had served for exactly the same length of time could be treated differently. It also became clear that many widows of men whose death was due to service were worse off financially than they would have been, had their husbands died in normal circumstances. Approval was given to reassess the former, and to introduce a supplementary pension for the latter group. This recognised the unintended consequence of the changes, which had left a group of widows at a disadvantage. Under the Grigg reassessment, as it was called, all existing widows' pensions were given the benefit of a third principal ordinary pension or a sixth principal modified pension, instead of the pension that they were receiving, where that was to their advantage. The scheme was designed to help those who had been disadvantaged, but the revised rates were paid from 10 December 1963, and the underlying principle of all the changes was not one of retrospection, which is what the Bill calls for. The supplement was introduced to ensure that the total pension income of the widow of an officer who was receiving a war award would exceed the income that she would have received had her husband's death not been due to service by at least £26 a year. I have asked how that amount was chosen, because a lot of these figures seem arbitrary—