War Pensioners (Equal Rights) (Hansard, 13 July 1994)

§ Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to review the effect of differential treatment of war disablement and war widow pensioners by local authorities; to bring forward means for equal treatment; and for connected purposes. The Bill would correct one small but important injustice in the way in which we treat war pensioners in this country. Over the years, it has been accepted by Governments that war pensioners, by which I mean war widows and war disablement pensioners—people who were in active service or those who were injured in the war when they were at home—have been treated by the state as the recipients of a justified form of compensation for their injury or bereavement. Answers on that point have been given over the years—I am grateful for the presence of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, the hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague)—by Ministers from the Department of Social Security which have made that clear.

Over the past decade, or a little longer, the cost of that compensation has been assessed and there has been a change in the way that the legislation has treated those people. First, dating back a little more than 20 years, local authorities in Britain were obliged—it goes back to the Housing Finance Act 1972—to disregard a proportion of war widow and war disablement pensions when assessing the entitlement of people in that category to housing benefit. In 1986, under the general review of social security legislation, there was no change to the discretionary position of local authorities, above the obligatory minimum amount of disregard. We then had an uprating in 1990 when the disregard went from £5 to £10.

By the arbitrary nature of which local authority area one lives in, it may be that if one is a war disablement pensioner or a war widow, one's entire pension is disregarded, part of one's pension is disregarded or the statutory 10 quid only is disregarded. That is not in any way a party-political point, because local authorities of all political colours and, indeed, of none fall into each of the categories. For example, if a war pensioner lives in Bristol, the City of London, Croydon, Leeds, Oxford, Pendle, Restormel or Wear Valley—I have chosen, at random, a group of local authorities across the country—not more than £10 would be disregarded, whereas if a war pensioner lives in one of the authorities next door, everything would be disregarded. So the anomaly has arisen that certain people, in exactly the same predicament, are treated differently by virtue simply of their residence. For a pensioner on a limited income, that difference may be significant and it is certainly unfair. The other relevant aspect is that the disregard now applies also to council tax benefit, so it applies to the help that pensioners receive with housing costs and with council tax bills.

All I want to argue is that there should be an urgent review and the Government should be asked to look at their policy again to see whether they ought to change it to give equity of treatment across the land.

1004 The latest available figures—they were given to me by Ministers in the past month—are that more than 290 local authorities offered a full disregard. A further 28 offered a full disregard for disablement pensioners only and another five offered a full disregard for widows' pensions only. About 150 local authorities did not operate a full disregard system. As a result, in 150 areas such pensioners were treated less fairly. Certainly they were less well off.

The full cost of my Bill would be very small. The Southwark local authority offers a full disregard and it costs every adult about 8p a year to do that. We are talking only of pence. It is also obvious that the problem is becoming less expensive to solve, because there are fewer war disablement pensioners and war widows left. In 1978, there were about 382,000 in those categories, and in 1992 there were only just over a quarter of a million. The bill to the Treasury is becoming smaller.

In the past financial year, the Government paid out—the figures were supplied by the Government—about £225 million in war widows' pensions. On the last day of last month, there were nearly 50,000 war widows' pensions and about 250,000 war disablement pensions.

This is the 50th anniversary year of D-day and next year will be the 50th anniversary year of VE-day. I am raising an issue which pensioners' organisations and ex-service people's organisations, such as the Royal British Legion, have been on about for a very long time, as Ministers will know.

I wish to put down a marker today so that between now and the Budget in the autumn the Treasury can seriously consider whether the very small additional cost in revenue terms of righting a social injustice for increasingly few people is something that it can now meet as a reward to a specific category of our fellow citizens during this year of all years.

The reality is that some people in the category that I am talking about are very old. They served, or were alive, in both world wars. The rest were alive during the second world war although not the first. They all deserve equity and I hope that the House will allow the issue to be examined. Above all, I hope that the Government will allow the Bill to be considered and that they will bring forward a proposal to put money into the kitty so that every local authority can treat every war pensioner in the same way from next year onwards.