War Widows and Pensioners (Equal Treatment) (Hansard, 10 May 1995)

§ Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to end discrimination and to review the effect of differential treatment of war disablement and war widows' pensions; to bring forward the means for equal treatment; and for connected purposes. Last Friday, Madam Speaker, you led this House in our commemoration in Westminster Hall of those who served the country in the last war. Over the weekend, many hon. Members will have attended the services, commemorations and events and the two-minutes silence to pay tribute to those who died or were bereaved.

Today, I seek leave, with very welcome support from both sides of the House, to introduce a Bill that seeks to deal with some of the remaining discrimination and unfairness that is suffered by those who were alive in the last war or who are the widows of those who served, and who now feel that they are being unfairly treated by the state.

In early-day motion 186, the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) draws attention to the concerns of that group of our community. That early-day motion has attracted over 240 signatures. I understand that nearly 50 other hon. Members, who do not normally sign early-day motions, have written to the Officers Pensions Society expressing their unequivocal support, and that there are getting on for 100 Government Members who support the proposals.

My Bill contains four matters that I hope that the Government will consider if the House allows the Bill to continue.

First, if somebody receives a war pension, where he lives will determine whether it is regarded or disregarded for the purpose of council tax and housing benefit. There is a statutory disregard of £10, and local authorities have the discretion to decide whether to disregard further. That does not apply in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where there is a full disregard for all war pensioners.

The only fair system that would ensure that people were not penalised by a decision made by their local authority that was dependent on entirely other factors would be a centrally regulated system. There should be total disregard for all war pensioners in relation to their council tax and housing benefit.

The bill for such a system would be small. My information is that not 60 per cent. but almost 90 per cent. of local authorities have already introduced some such system. The best calculation of additional public expenditure shows that it would require less than £2 million more to ensure that all our war veterans and war widows are treated equally.

Secondly, if someone has served in the war, receives a war pension and is injured, his war pension may disentitle him from legal aid when pursuing any action arising from his war injury. That matter has been pursued by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie), who has taken it up with the Lord Chancellor. It causes great unhappiness and discontent among people who gave their service, have been injured and are rightfully entitled to pursue their legal remedies. It seems the grossest injustice 762 for them to be told that, because they have served and have been given by the state a reward for their service, they are unable to receive legal aid.

The third and fourth issues would require the Government to look at two subjects on which they have made no concessions, which arose during debates on the Pensions Bill in the other place and on Second Reading, and which the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) specifically mentioned. Other hon. Members and I welcome the concession by the Secretary of State for Social Security in relation to the new clause on second bereavement or divorce introduced in the other place. That leaves two categories of people who are still treated unfairly.

There are about 2,000 widows who, if they remarry, will lose their entitlements. Whether they become divorced again or bereaved or their marriage breaks down, they cannot claim what was intended to be a war service entitlement. The evidence of those who deal with the issue all the time—the War Widows Association and services associations—shows that probably only one in 100 widows have remarried. The widows would rather not remarry. Some of them cohabit—sometimes they are forced to do so—rather than lose financially as a result of remarriage.

The cost of introducing a system to deal with the problem would probably be very small, and could even benefit the Treasury. Such a system would be much fairer on those involved. In 1989, the then Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), accepted that the pension entitlement had been paid for by such people, who had earned their rights. It is anomalous that, whereas all other pension schemes, including ones in this place, give people a right which they retain for as long as they are widows, the war widows pension scheme, unusually, excludes those with a war service background.

The last category of people who are unfairly treated are those who married subsequent to the war service of their husbands. If someone served in the war and married later, his widow cannot take the pension that he earned and nobody else has inherited.

Every one of the 14 comparable armed forces schemes makes a pension provision for widows of post-retirement marriages.

The widows of Members of Parliament who married those Members of Parliament after their retirement receive the pension that their former husbands earned as a result of their service, yet the widows of service men who die before the beginning of the next century will be eligible for only a fraction of the service widows' pension, and the widows of service men who died before 1978 currently receive no pension at all.

We gave, rightly and properly, fine words of tribute over the weekend. There are a small and diminishing group of people who now want us to live up to what we say about the importance of what they did by what we do. It is shameful that, 50 years later, we as a state are unwilling to pay that small price.

I hope that Ministers will concede those matters as a result of the Bill, in the context of other Bills, or, at the latest, in the Queen's Speech, the Budget and the social security statement in the autumn. There is overwhelming support for the proposal. This is a great injustice, and the 763 price we would require the state to pay to remedy it is minute compared with the service for which those people are entitled to their proper reward.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Simon Hughes, Mr. James Molyneaux, Mr. Alfred Morris, Mrs. Margaret Ewing, Mr. Dafydd Wigley, Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. David Alton, Mrs. Edwina Currie, Mr. Nicholas Winterton, Mr. Andrew Mackinlay and Mrs. Diana Maddock.