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Forces Widows' Pensions (Equality of Treatment) Bill

We will call that a score draw, but such matters could be considered in Committee, as the hon. Member for West Chelmsford suggested. The important point is that if the legislation is to make provision retrospectively, it must cover all groups, although I do not think that it was the right hon. Gentleman's intention not to do that. I have covered some of the issues relating to the retrospective nature of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman quite rightly made the argument for the special group that he mentioned, but there are other areas of the Bill where, if we were to make a change, we would make a special group of others, as I think I have mentioned. Another group that we could argue for are those who were affected by what is called the pension trough, which relates to public service pension schemes that are final salary schemes, such as the armed forces pension scheme of 1975. That means that pension awards are made on the basis of an individual's pay rate at the time, which is again a topical issue. There have been a number of troughs over the past 50 years, but a particular cause for concern among service pensioners in the mid-1970s, who still feel aggrieved and quite rightly make representations, was the fact that public sector salaries were restrained because of the then incomes policy. Several years of high inflation meant that the pensions of those retiring before wage constraints were lifted were overlooked. They are another group of people whom we might consider who feel strongly that they were disadvantaged through no fault of their own. They served their country, but they were affected by the then Government's incomes policy. The question is whether we should make a retrospective change for those individuals. Last time I was at the Dispatch Box, I was replying to the Gurkha debate. Everyone would agree that we owe the Gurkhas a great debt of gratitude, but one of the issues raised in that debate was the retrospection of Gurkha pensions. As has been said—I know this in detail—the issue has been to the High Court on a number of occasions. The Gurkhas are a group of individuals whom the public support and for whom they have a tremendous amount of respect, but there is an issue with those individuals who served before July 1997—a date chosen because it was the date on which the Gurkhas became based in the UK, rather than in Hong Kong or other parts of south-east Asia. The pensions payable to Gurkhas post-1997 were incorporated into the armed forces schemes, with most of them in the new armed forces scheme of 2005, while the pre-1997 pensions obviously come under a different scheme. There is the question whether we should retrospectively pay any changes in the armed forces pension scheme to the pre-1997 Gurkhas, which is an issue that I have already raised, given the changes that we have made to allow more Gurkhas to come into this country, and which I think is due to return to court this year. The figure for that group alone is £1.5 billion. Those two examples demonstrate the costs involved. They might not seem like much individually, but if we add them up, we see that they are large just for the MOD, and the implications across other Departments are also quite large. The provisions would also break the precedent relating to retrospection, which all Government have resisted doing. To do so would make most of the changes to the pensions would be unaffordable. A further point that I would like to make relates to the plight of war widows. I pay tribute to Gill Grigg and others from the War Widows Association who have worked tremendously hard on behalf of war widows and given support not only to the older widows but to the younger ones whose husbands served in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. I always find it very humbling when I meet the widows of those who served in those conflicts. They take tremendous pride in what their husbands did, and we need to recognise that we should support them. The right hon. Gentleman's point about the older war widows was correct. I would not want to give the impression that the pension is the only support that this country gives to them. As a Government, we can rightly be proud of the changes that we have made for pensioners, which also affect many war widows. The minimum income guarantee, for example, has raised a lot of pensioners out of poverty, and I know that the winter fuel payment, which all pensioners receive, is very welcome. We need to look at the question of widows' pensions and war pensions in the round. The right hon. Gentleman has made some important points, but the aspects of retrospection and affordability make his proposals difficult to accept. Also, we should not raise people's hopes. I accept his point that the number of individuals involved is declining over the years, but we should not do any injustice to those who died before the changes were made. Any changes would involve an arbitrary date. I would not want this Government or any other to be prevented from introducing a change to pension entitlement by having to consider the cost of implementing the change retrospectively.