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Forces Widows' Pensions (Equality of Treatment) Bill

Does not the right hon. Gentleman think it would be very unfair if, for example, we were to pay the increase now, but the estate of somebody who went to meet their maker a week before or a year before did not have a claim on it? It is not as simple as he suggests. Moreover, as I mentioned, members of the armed forces who served after 31 March 1973 were given the option to buy in their previous service. Would it not be unfair now to extend the enhanced benefits to widows of husbands who had not taken steps to acquire that financial improvement? Compensation would be difficult. Would we have to set up a scheme to pay back those who had chosen to pay the additional contribution? Post-retirement marriage is another problematic example that dates back to the Social Security Act 1975, which had implications for the AFPS and many other schemes. The Act required occupational pension schemes to introduce a pension for widows who married their husbands after they had retired from service. Provision was made in the armed forces pension scheme in 1975 to comply with the Act, but only widows whose husbands served after April 1978 benefited, and only service after that date was used to calculate the pension. For widows, the change was not introduced until April 1989, and then only for service from that date. The one-off extension of entitlement to all current and deferred AFPS pensioners would, the right hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear, cost about £50 million. Again, there would be a crossover effect on other public service schemes. The other issue that affects pensions is commonly referred to as the pension for life. Following a change of policy in 2000, widows and widowers have been able to retain their pension on remarriage or cohabitation—a point that the right hon. Gentleman made. However, the change was extended only to those individuals who had not already remarried or cohabited. The changes that were made in 2000 were exceptional and for a special group of war widows, and they were not extended to the widows and widowers whose spouses had died for reasons unrelated to service life. That was a defined group of individuals to whom the right hon. Gentleman referred. In 2008, the Government Actuary's Department conducted a detailed study of the costs of providing pensions for life for non-attributable widows, and found that the cost of providing pensions for future service would be about £14 million a year. That would gradually decrease, as the right hon. Gentleman suggested, as the number of AFPS pensioners fell—as they got older and the grim reaper took his toll. Using the rates in the 1975 AFPS, the retrospective costs would be about £70 million, but they might be as high as £350 million for the armed forces scheme. I asked for the figure throughout the public sector, and I shall be quite happy to share the information with the right hon. Gentleman afterwards. It would be about £3 billion, although I accept his point that, as years go by, it will decrease. Again, however, such a measure would be unfair. No Government have retrospectively changed pension entitlements under the schemes. It is worth looking at the similarities between the provisions of the Bill and the changes that were introduced in the Pensions Act 1995—being an anorak, I spent last night trying to see the crossovers. The main clauses before us were tabled during the passage of the 1995 Act in order to do exactly what the right hon. Gentleman wants to do today. New clauses 11 to 14 were introduced by Mrs. Ewing, a Scottish Nationalist Member at the time, and they were voted on. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who was a Minister in what I think was the Department for Social Security in 1995, resisted new clause 11, and it is worth noting what was said in respect of the other new clauses:""With this, it will be convenient to discuss also the following: New clause 12—Post 1973 war widows— 'Notwithstanding any other enactment, a widow awarded a Forces Family Pension (Attributable) shall receive that pension for life.'. New clause 13—Post 1973 war widows (No. 2)— 'Notwithstanding any other enactment, a widow in receipt of a Forces Family Pension (Attributable) shall receive that pension for life.'. New clause 14—Post-retirement marriage: service widow's pension— 'Without prejudice to benefits already available under the terms of the Armed Forces Pension Scheme for widows of members of Her Majesty's Armed Forces with service beyond 6th April 1978, no widow of a member of Her Majesty's Armed Forces shall be disqualified from receiving a full pension under that scheme in relation to her late husband's membership of Her Majesty's Armed Forces by virtue of the fact that the marriage occurred after he had retired from Her Majesty's Armed Forces, provided that that marriage was before his 65th birthday and had lasted for at least three years.'."—[Official Report, 4 July 1995; Vol. 263, c.248-49.]" The new clauses were eloquently proposed by Mrs. Ewing, and the Minister replying, the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, said:""New clause 11 seeks to make an exception for one group of public service pensioners—the widows of ex-service personnel—by backdating an improvement to the armed forces pension scheme that was made in 1973."—[Official Report, 4 July 1995; Vol. 263, c. 258.]" The provision of pensions for the widows of those who married after the husband had left the scheme was one of a number of major improvements to public service pension schemes made in the 1970s, but each of those improvements was introduced at a fixed and current date; none would have been affordable if it had been extended retrospectively to recognise all previous service. Sir Tim Spicer, the MP for Dorset, I think it was—[Interruption.] Sir Jim Spicer, the MP for Dorset, West. I thank the hon. Member for West Chelmsford. The fact that those changes were not made retrospectively in the 1970s was an important factor for the Government then, and it is an important factor for the Government now, and for all future Governments. I do not usually agree with the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, but he reiterated that not only that Government but others had never engaged in retrospection. He clearly explained that if new provisions were introduced with retrospection, it would make them unaffordable. Mrs. Ewing, who was obviously quite a formidable lady, was not having that and pressed the new clauses to a vote. I am not criticising the right hon. Gentleman in any way, because I know that, like me, he is a party loyalist, but he voted against the new clauses. The Ayes were 41 and the Noes were 199. The then Government realised that they could not have retrospection, and that is relevant today as well. There is a legal principle involved in retrospection, and all these things get tested in the courts—increasingly in the European Court of Human Rights. In January 2002, the Forces Pension Society backed a challenge in the European Court by a number of retired officers on the post-retirement and one-third pension issue. Their complaint was that the 1975 AFPS calculation of their widow's pension entitlement in the event of death, which was based on the date of marriage or retirement, was arbitrary and discriminatory. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks made that point in his contribution on the 1995 Act. It takes me back to the point I keep making, that wherever we put the cut-off date there will be winners and losers on either side of it. Interestingly, the Court ruled that the challenge was inadmissible as the individuals involved were not victims and had received their entitlement as set out when they retired. It ruled that the subsequent rule change had not altered the entitlement of those who had already retired. That is an important point. People join a scheme on the terms set out at that point. I accept that many of us, particularly younger individuals, never look at their entitlements in their pension scheme until later in life, when they realise that they might make it to retirement and get the pension that they have been paying into. However, that challenge to the scheme was not allowed by the European Court of Human Rights. The Bill encompasses civil partners. As hon. Members know, the Civil Partnership Act 2004 created a completely new legal relationship enabling two individuals of the same sex to register their relationship. The Bill suggests that civil partners, as well as widows, be included in its remit. When registering a civil partnership, same-sex couples obtain legal recognition of their relationship and acquire the same rights enjoyed by married couples. We extended those rights in the Armed Forces Act 2006, and I remember that that was bitterly opposed at the time by the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), but common sense succeeded. The Civil Partnership Act came into force on 5 December 2005. Before that date, while other couples had the option of marriage, same-sex partners could not formalise their relationship. The situation for service personnel who were still in service when the Act came into force is straightforward: the whole of their reckonable service will be counted towards the pension of their civil partner survivor. The general guidance on the Act was that the entitlement of civil partners to survivor's benefit could be limited to service between 1988 and the date of the scheme member's retirement. However, for the armed forces pension scheme it was decided that as civil partners had an entirely new status, they would be allowed to count service from October 1987. The same was agreed for widows' pensions.