Clause 16.—(PENSION OF PRIME MINISTER.) (Hansard, 10 February 1965)

§ Mr. Diamond
I beg to move, in page 13, line 1, to leave out from "who" to the end of line 2 and to insert: at any time after the commencement of this Act holds or has held office as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury". This Amendment is moved purely for the sake of clarity. Clause 16(2) provides for the pension of the widow or widower and children of a Prime Minister. The wording here is a little awkward. It is intended to cover both the person who ceased to be Prime Minister before his death and the person who dies while he is Prime Minister. The Clause, as originally drafted, perhaps did not make this absolutely clear, and therefore I move this Amendment to remove any possibility 424 of doubt. The Amendment makes it clear that both those contingencies are provided for.

§ Mr. Diamond
I beg to move, in page 13, line 3, to leave out from "as" to "but" in line 5 and to insert: if the deceased had been entitled at the time of his death to a pension under section 7 of this Act of an annual amount equal to two-thirds of the pension to which he was entitled or prospectively entitled under the said section 4(2)". It would be convenient, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if we could deal with this Amendment and the following one at the same time, since they are related to each other. In moving the Amendment the first thing I must do is to repeat my 425 gratitude to the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) who raised in Committee a question about the clarity of this subsection.
To refer quite shortly to the background, Clause 16(2) provides that a Prime Minister's widow, or widower, and children shall be eligible for pension under Clauses 8 to 10 of the Bill. This is subject to two modifications of which the second is that the Prime Minister's own pension shall be treated as reduced by one-third for the purposes of calculating the widow's pension. Clauses 8 to 10 provide that a widow's or widower's pensions are fixed at one-half of the spouse's rate, and the intention of Clause 16(2) is that the dependants of a Prime Minister shall be pensionable in the same way as dependants of Members, but that the amount of the dependants' pensions shall be related to the original pension in a different way. By the original pension I refer to the Prime Minister's ex-officio pension of £4,000. Half the rate of pension for the widows of Members was specifically recommended by the Lawrence Committee, but it made no recommendation on a rate for a Prime Minister's widow. As the normal widow's pension in the public service is one-third of the husband's rate, and as Mr. Speaker Morrison's widow was also granted a pension of one-third of the rate, one is proposing in the Bill that that shall also apply to the Prime Minister's widow's pension.
The wording previously did achieve this but achieved it by a method which was not, perhaps, as clear as it might have been and to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman drew attention. Therefore, these two Amendments clarify this by leaving out Clause 16(2,b) and writing the reduction, that is to say, the reduction of from one-half to one-third, into the main part of Clause 16(2). The widow's pension now made payable is to be as if the husband had been entitled under Clause 7 to a pension two-thirds of his actual ex-officio pension.
It will be appreciated, of course, that if we reduce the Prime Minister's pension to two-thirds and then provide a widow's pension of one-half of two-thirds, we are getting back to the original one-third which we sought to provide in the first place. What one seeks to provide is one 426 third to the widow, and the way it is now being done is to say, take the Prime Minister's pension, and reduce it by one-third; we get two-thirds; and divide it by two, getting the one-third which we are seeking to get.
I hope that makes it clear. It is very difficult to get one's arithmetic right when one is on one's feet, as you are well aware, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, from having heard some hon. Members make some extraordinary calculations from this Box and opposite. I hope I have got the arithmetic right and that I have made the matter clear to hon. Members, and I hope that the wording of the Amendment will be thought clear by hon. and right hon. Members opposite, and particularly the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire who raised the matter in the first place. This Amendment clarifies the original provision in making it clear that what we are doing is what is normal in a case of this kind. It is distinct from the Member's widow's pension, because the Member's widow's pension was laid down by Lawrence, and we have accepted Lawrence, and the Prime Minister's pension is a separate matter.

§ Sir D. Renton
I should like to thank the hon. Member for dealing with this point in the way he has done. There was never any dispute between us as to the substance of the matter. It was merely a question whether the drafting was correct. Speaking for myself, I must say that I think he has now got it right.