§ 2. Sir WALTER de FRECEasked the Minister of Pensions if he will give the number of cases in which each year since the Armistice to date widows have made application for a pension on the death of their husbands, stating how many of these cases have been admitted and how many rejected and, in addition, in how many of the former cases the dead men were receiving no pension at the time of death?
§ The MINISTER of PENSIONS (Major Tryon)As the answer involves a considerable number of figures, I propose, with my hon. Friend's permission, to circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
§ Following is the answer:
§ It is not possible to give the information asked for in the first part of the question exactly in the form desired, in view of the fact that claims made in one year may in many cases not be finally decided either by the Ministry or, on appeal, by the Appeal Tribunal until the succeeding year. The following figures, however, show for each calendar year since 1920—the earliest date for which 672 reliable records were kept—the approximate number of claims made by widows which were decided by the Ministry or the Tribunal and the awards made:
| Year. | Number of claims decided. | Number of awards of pension made. | ||
| 1920 | … | … | 11,500 | 9,700 |
| 1921 | … | … | 13,250 | 8,100 |
| 1922 | … | … | 9,200 | 5,600 |
| 1923 | … | … | 9,250 | 4,550 |
| 1924 | … | … | 9,500 | 4,250 |
| 1925 | … | … | 8,450 | 3,500 |
| 1926 | … | … | 4,700 | 2,400 |
| 1927 | … | … | 3,500 | 1,900 |
§ The Ministry's records do not enable the information asked for in the last part of the question to be given.