HL Deb 08 December 1943 vol 130 cc143-61
THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

My Lords, the Resolution which I am going to move reads as follows: That, in the opinion of this House, the rate of allowances for children of officers killed on service is too low, and should be raised. I make no apology for again bringing this subject to the notice of your Lordships, although I did so as recently as June 30 last. On the contrary, I believe that when your Lordships have heard the facts you will consider that I am fully justified in taking this action to-day. I submit that this is one of those matters which it is singularly fitting for the House of Lords to take up, for it deals with a section of the population relatively few in number, inarticulate, unorganized and scattered up and down the length and breadth of the British Isles. I refer to the widows and orphans of those who have been killed in our defence.

On the last occasion when this matter was before your Lordships' House, the noble Viscount, Lord Clifden, who replied for the Government, and who, I understand, is going to reply again to-day, used these words: The question of rates and other kindred matters affecting war pensions and allowances is at this moment under review. That being the case he was not able to make a statement on the subject, and I was unable to press the point. The result of that review was published in a White Paper in July last, and it was so disappointing that I felt bound to put down this Motion, and again appeal to your Lordships on behalf of these people. When I last addressed the House on this subject I submitted that what was required was a substantial increase in the basic rate of the pensions and allowances, and that small increments to meet the rise in the cost of living must be inadequate. Well, the recent increases were based on the rise in the cost of living, and that was generously interpreted inasmuch as the cost of living was taken as being what it was at the end of the last war, although it has not yet risen so high as that. But, in any case, the result was inadequate. Before I proceed any further I wish to emphasize the point that I am appealing on behalf of the widows and orphans of officers of the three Services who have been killed. I do not wish to be taken as a sailor speaking only for the Navy. I am speaking for all the Services.

Equivalent ranks receive equivalent pensions and I would remind the House that the equivalent ranks are: a Captain in the Navy, a full Colonel in the Army and a Group Captain in the Royal Air Force; a Commander in the Navy, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Army and a Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force; a Lieutenant-Commander, a Major and a Squadron Leader; and a Lieutenant, a Captain and a Flying Officer or Flight-Lieutenant. I am going to refer to the naval ranks as they come more readily to my tongue and I shall not mention more than those I have just alluded to. I take the ranks of Captain, Commander, Lieutenant-Commander and Lieutenant because they cover those years in a man's life, twenty-five to fifty, in which we hope, for the sake of the nation, that he has married and had children and therefore been faced with the educational problem. Roughly speaking, the children of the Lieutenant and Lieutenant-Commander may be taken to be of the infant age, those of the Commanders of the private school age, and those of the Captain of the age when they are finishing at the private school and entering the university. The educational problems that confront them, their hopes and their fears for their children, the choice of the school and all the other details will undoubtedly have been the subject of much discussion between the parents, and when the father is killed we may be quite sure that the widow, remembering the decisions that were taken, will make a brave fight to carry out her dead husband's wishes concerning the children, particularly the boys.

Obviously, before I ask your Lordships to say the children's allowances are not sufficiently high, I must acquaint you with the rate which the widows receive—the two are interlocked. In 1942 the pension for a Captain's widow was fixed at £215 a year, for a Commander's widow at £195, for a lieutenant-Commander's widow at £155 and for the widow of a Lieutenant at £115. You will remember that in the spring of this year there was an agitation about these rates of pensions and allowances, and they were gone into, and in July we had the announcement of the rises. Well, the rise in these pensions for widows of Captains, Commanders, and Lieutenant-Commanders was £15 a year— 25s. a month—and now the Captain's widow receives £230, the Commander's widow £210, the Lieutenant-Commander's widow £170, and the Lieutenant's £150. It is against that background that I ask you to consider whether the children's allowances are sufficiently high. What are these allowances? There are two which must be considered. The first is a maintenance allowance payable to the widow for each child under the age of eighteen, as long as it is maintained by her. The rate in 1939 was fixed at £24 per annum but that has been gradually increased. I think in 1942 it was £33, and in 1943 this long-advertised rise went as high as £36, at which it new stands. The second is an education allowance, but to that I will refer later.

As an illustration to make my point, I shall only quote one rank, that of Commander, Lieutenant-Colonel or Wing Commander. I take that rank for two reasons—partly because those officers are in the intermediary stage, both in regard to educating their children and in their standing in their own Services, and partly because they are to a great extent the leaders of the men in the fighting line. Commanders at sea command divisions of destroyers, the smaller ships, flotillas of light craft, flotillas of submarines, etc.; Lieutenant-Colonels are in the field with their battalions; their artillery and so on, and Wing Commanders command formations in the air. These officers occupy positions of great responsibility, and upon their judgment may depend victory or defeat, and certainly many men's lives. These officers all have prospects of further promotion. They have been selected once; they will have been reported upon as likely to do well in the higher ranks of the Service. They have everything before them, and even for those who do not obtain further promotion—and there must be some—there are appointments for which they are eligible and which they can hold until the age of fifty, or they can retire on a smaller pension at an age when they may hope to obtain civil employment.

The pay of a Commander of a ship, together with his allowances, is something like £1,000 a year and he enjoys some substantial amenities. If he is killed on active service his widow receives a pension of £210, and for each child she gets £36; so that if he leaves three children—and that, we are told, is the minimum number that a family ought to have—she has to Keep four people upon £318 a year. A financial crisis of extreme gravity faces the family, which may well entail their having to give up their home and take the children away from their schools and send them to cheaper schools. The widow has to pay Income Tax at Service rates. On the other hand, she is able to obtain an education allowance for the actual education of her children between the ages of eight and eighteen.

In the Order in Council regulating war pensions and allowances we read: A widow in receipt of a war pension may be granted, at the discretion of the Minister, an education allowance provided that—

  1. (a) the pecuniary circumstances of the family are such as to require it;
  2. (b) the Minister is satisfied as to the type of education in view.. and that the child would have been likely to have had an education of the same type had the father survived."
That is excellent in principle—" of the same type had the father survived." Nothing could be fairer; but when we come to put that principle into practice it is not so good. We read on: The amount of the education allowance shall be determined by the Minister and in any one year shall not exceed £50. I should doubt if many officers of the rank of which I am speaking now foresee limiting the cost of the education of their children to the amount of £50 a year. Recently there appeared in The Times under the heading "Reduced fees for the sons of naval officers" the details of certain scholarships being offered by a wellknown school, commemorating its connexion with the Navy during this war, the building having been taken over for a naval training establishment. This was a very generous offer. It aimed at reducing the statutory fees to successful candidates to £100 a year. That is obviously quite outside the reach of a widow whose gross income is £318 a year. She will only get £50 towards that £100 if this boy does manage to secure a scholarship.

I may be told that these pensions and allowances are now what they were in 1919, inferring that if the Services were satisfied then they should be satisfied now. The Services were not satisfied then. In 1919 a committee of naval officers was set up by order of the Government to go into the whole question of naval pay and allowances and submit to the Government a report showing the amended rates considered to be necessary. That report stated that the Committee considered that the pension of a Commander's widow should be at a minimum of £250 a year and at a maximum of £300 a year, with other ranks and ratings in proportion, and that the child allowance for all commissioned officers should be £50 a year. I commend those figures to the consideration of the Government. They were refused in 1919 and we have now got to 1943. Had I produced this Motion thirty years ago it is quite possible I should have been accused of trying to get special consideration for the children of one class of society known in those days as the "officer class." That cannot be said to-day, because now we are drawing officers from the people as a whole, and before the war the number of Commissions given to ranks and ratings in the Service was continually increasing. It is indeed on behalf of the "ranker" officers that in my opinion the strongest argument can be put forward for further consideration of these children's allowances.

It is hardly necessary for me to say in this House that the fact of a sailor, soldier or airman having worked hard for and been granted a Commission means that he has had a clear record for several years and that he has shown qualities far above the average. If he had not done so he would never have been recommended for a Commission. Probably one of the principal incentives for a man to work for a Commission—and it is an uphill task—is that he will be able to give his wife an easier time and to make some provision for her widowhood, and start his children in life on a higher plane than that on which he had to start. But with the pensions and allowances now being handed out you undo a lot of the good work that such a man may have done. It is a poor reward to a man who has given his life for his country. The existing regulations seem to have been framed upon the supposition that all officers have private means. That is a popular delusion that was fostered by novelette writers. It may have been so in the distant past, but I can speak of my own knowledge when I say that it has not been so during the last half century, even if it were true before then. It is at any rate an entirely wrong basis on which to frame your compassionate allowances.

To realize how unjust the present system is it is only necessary to compare the lot of a widow of an officer killed on service with that of the wife of his contemporary who has been fortunate enough to come through unscathed. The one has before her a life which must be a constant struggle to bring up her children while the other has the prospect of increased comfort as the husband rises in his profession until finally he may retire on an assured competence. At a time when we are hearing a great deal of the need for an increase in the birth-rate, surely the begetting of children from such fine stock as are the young men who officer our Fighting Services should receive every possible encouragement. Is it likely that officers will be very keen on having large families when they see the wives and families of their brother officers reduced to this impecunious state? It might be said that it was encouraging these young officers to have children, but in my opinion the reverse is the case.

I will take the cases, if I may, of two widows of, say, Captains in the Army, it may be of the same battalion. They are killed. Each widow gets £150 a year pension. I have nothing to say against that, but one of the widows may be the mother of two small children. She will get £36 for each child, so that her gross income will come to £222 per annum for the three of them. The other widow may be childless. She therefore is free to go out and obtain work, which she would not have much difficulty in doing at £3 a week, and therefore she could double her pension. Thus the woman who has done her best for the country and has produced children is put in a far worse state financially than the woman who has had no children. I think it is quite possible that many a young couple nowadays, looking at life before them, will say: "We will wait till after the war before we decide to have children." Surely child allowances should be based and fixed on such a scale that they would be regarded as some sort of encouragement to have a family. I will quote another case. If a child has no mother the allowance is £60 per annum. That seems reasonable, but if the child has a mother it is put down to £36, so that £24 has got to be found to make up the amount of money which the Government consider necessary for the maintenance of a child. Surely it is not asking too much of this great and powerful nation to do all in its power to soften for a family the great blow which it suffers when father or husband is killed in the service of his country, and to do it not as an act of charity but as paying a debt of honour to the estate of the dead man. Provision for the future should surely be based on what might have been the state of that family had the father survived.

It may be considered by those who are responsible for these matters that to increase widows' pensions by any substantial amount would make too big a charge, and for too long, on the national Exchequer. That cannot be so with regard to the children's allowances because they will be practically wiped out twenty years after hostilities have ceased. Therefore they might be framed on more generous lines. Then if you take the case of the junior officers, the officer; who are in command of our vessels at sea, such as submarines, we had the names of nine Lieutenants the other day who had distinguished themselves. No cue wants reminding of the value of the leadership of the Captains and Subalterns in the Army, and the magnificent work they do or what countless deeds of heroism must have been performed which will never be recorded because no one is left to tell of them. These are such men as those who took part in the Battle of Britain. The Prime Minister, referring to the gallant officers of the Royal Air Force, used those memorable words: "Never was so much owed by so many to so few." How magnificently they have gone on doing such work ever since. How do we reward these young officers and those of the other Services I have mentioned? We do so by awarding their widows £150 or £130 a year and giving their children £3 a month. I do ask your Lordships this afternoon to take action en behalf of a deserving and valuable section of the nation and the children of those who have lost their lives in our defence, and to do so because you consider that these amounts are too low and should be raised. In conclusion may I remind you of a phrase in Arkwright's poem "The Supreme Sacrifice," beginning with the words "O valiant hearts" and ending with this last line: "Their memory hallowed in the land they loved." I suggest that it is a practical way of showing we do hallow their memory for the nation to cherish their children. I beg to move.

Moved to resolve, That, in the opinion of this House, the rate of allowances for children of officers killed on service is too low, and should be raised.—(The Earl of Cork and Orrery.)

LORD BIRDWOOD

My Lords, I am sure that every member of your Lordships' House, and especially those who may have spent many years in the Fighting Services, will be deeply grateful to the noble and gallant Admiral of the Fleet who has just spoken, and who has so vividly placed before us the great difficulties in which such a large number of very deserving officers of all the Services find themselves on retirement. He has clearly stated the case, and as a matter of fact we realize that this case was discussed in another place only a day or two ago. When that case was brought forward the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has not held his appointment very long, seemed to be surprised to hear the statements made as to some of the pensions which are available to retired officers. I think I am right in saying that he promised to give the most sympathetic consideration to the matter, and to see what could be done by way of improvement. That being the case I shall delay your Lordships only a very short time.

The noble and gallant Admiral of the Fleet has placed all the details carefully before the House, and accordingly I shall not go into them, but would repeat, for the benefit of those who do not realize what the regulations are, a very few facts about them. After the last war, in 1919, it was realized in what an abject state of penury a very large number of our retired officers were then living. It really was absolute poverty they were living in. They are not a class of professional grumblers, or grumblers at all, but men who have the direst objection to airing their grievances about pensions or their way of living. Among these officers are a great many who have our deepest sym- pathy—men who have devoted their lives to the various Services, in many cases men who obtained their Commissions from the ranks, possibly after a great many years' service, at an age very much in excess of those who joined from the ordinary military colleges. Very often they found themselves compulsorily retired under the age rule before they had been able to earn anything like a high pension.

I know from personal experience how strong the feeling has been on the subject of these pensions. I speak of the time when I was Commander-in-Chief in India and had the opportunity of seeing, and did see, a lot of non-commissioned officers and men; and later, even up to the present, I have seen a great deal of a large number of non-commissioned officers and men as well as officers. I have come across many cases of excellent warrant officers and non-commissioned officers who say that they refuse to accept Commissions, and when you ask them why, they reply: "Why should I accept a commission? As a warrant officer or noncommissioned officer I am very well off. Very little is expected of me in the way of expense, and I can carry on comfortably on my pay. I get free rations, free uniform, free quarters. As an officer I should be given a certain allowance— a very small one—to obtain my first uniform, and after that I should be entirely dependent on myself. If I have no private means, I cannot see how I can carry on as an officer, whereas I am perfectly comfortable as a warrant officer or non-commissioned officer." Surely that must be absolutely wrong. It is a case of noblesse oblige. The Army are the last people who want to call upon their officers to do more than they are able. It is the general public who demand that officers should do more. The general public expect officers to do much more than the rank and file. Remember, too, that men like these, who got their Commissions after years in the ranks, are very often not qualified to take up another appointment. Their lives have been spent in barracks, and they have had no opportunity of qualifying themselves to increase their small pensions. In addition to the ordinary expenses, every one of these men, like every member of your Lordships' House, has the inestimable privilege of paying 50 per cent. of his income in taxation—double what it was in 1935.

The noble and gallant Admiral of the Fleet quoted figures, but these figures were gross, and in every case 50 per cent. is deducted before the men receive it. Certainly that is the case in the Army. In 1919 it was recognized that these pensions were too low, and a new rate was brought in which, in addition to the actual pension, gave a definite sum dependent on the cost of living. That was very much appreciated and it went on until 1935 when the rate was stabilized; but curiously enough it was stabilized at 9½ per cent. below the actual cost of living at that time. Why, I cannot tell, but that is the case. The Royal Warrant on the subject reads as follows: The rate will be subject to revisions either upwards or downwards to an extent not exceeding 20 per cent. as the cost of living rises or falls. In spite of that, the figure was stabilized at 9½ per cent. below the then cost of living, and I can assure your Lordships that that was definitely regarded as a real breach of faith by the men concerned. They have in consequence been subject to the very greatest hardship in carrying on at all. It may be of interest to your Lordships to know that the present basic rate figure is £200, and still no addition has been made to that 9½ per cent.

I am not proposing that there should be an actual increase in the rate of pensions, as the noble and gallant Admiral has suggested. That is absolutely desirable, but I see very little prospect of getting it. Therefore I strongly urge that the Government should agree to add 20 per cent. to the existing pensions, and thereby remove a great and legitimate grievance which is felt by these gallant officers who have retired. If that is done, a great many men will be able to say that they no longer feel that they have had a raw deal. The expression one hears time after time when going around is, "I have not had a square deal?" If your Lordships will ensure that our officers who have devoted the whole of their lives to the Services are given a fair deal, I am sure the Services will be deeply grateful.

LORD CHATFIELD

My Lords, I should like to support very briefly the Motion which has been moved by my noble and gallant friend, that the rate of allowances for the children of officers killed in action is too low. It may seem to many of you that it should not be necessary for one of your Lordship to rise in this House and ask the Government to give a fairer deal to those who suffer through their husbands or fathers being killed in action. With regard to that I would remind your Lordships that all the big improvements of conditions of service as regards pay, which have been achieved in our time, have only been effected by pressure from outside Whitehall. It was so at the end of the last war when the state of affairs as regards the pay of the officers and men of the Services had reached what has been justly called a scandal compared with the conditions existing elsewhere in these islands. Due to that pressure, the conditions of pay were entirely reconstructed and greatly improved. The same thing occurred as regards the marriage allowances for naval officers in the peace years; there, again, nothing but continued pressure from outside enabled that injustice to be put right. I am afraid that it is only by pressure from outside the councils of Whitehall, such as by your Lordships, that we shall get the conditions under which Service widows and their children are living at the present time put on a proper footing.

When, for example, a naval officer— though like my noble and gallant friend I do not speak for the Navy alone on this matter—has done ten or fifteen years in the Service and has perhaps done his duty so well that he sees a prospect of promotion and of steady advancement, he begins to wonder whether he shall launch the matrimonial ship. When he considers that he has two things in mind. The first is that if he continues to serve the State and is fortunate and does not run his ship ashore or suffer from the many hazards that occur in military, air and naval life, he will, when he retires, get what may be called a very good pension. He also may consider that he is a healthy man—he would not be in the Service if he were not—and if he manages to survive the dangers to health that a man suffers, say, at sea at the danger in the air, he will live a long time. He will be able to give his family a comfortable home on his pension and educate his children. But he always will have an anxiety, because if on the day that he takes his pension he is run over by an omnibus that pension, which seemed to him and his wife so attractive, in consideration of which they had bought their house and put their children to school, will be cancelled by the State, and an entirely new rate of pension will be the lot of those he leaves behind, a rate of pension which is only perhaps one-third of the amount that had been expected. It may be said that actually the State has a fair chance and so has the widow. The husband may live until he is ninety (or eighty, shall we say?) and in that case actuarially the State is the loser. If, on the contrary, the officer dies soon after he has retired then the widow is the loser and the State is the gainer. But there is this to be remembered, that the State can afford to be the loser and the widow cannot.

That has been the anxiety which has always obsessed the minds of officers of the Services and also of those who administer them in the State Departments. So much was that the case that in 1927, when I was at the Admiralty, we endeavoured to bring in a compulsory insurance scheme for naval officers, because we knew that the pensions for widows and children were inadequate and we could not get them increased. Unfortunately, that compulsory scheme which was largely supported by the officers of the Service, was found to be unpractical and instead, a good many years later, in 1937, a voluntary insurance scheme for officers was introduced to augment the pensions for widows and children which we at the Admiralty knew were entirely inadequate. That, I think, will show your Lordships that it is not merely the idea of the noble and gallant Earl who moved this Motion and myself and Lord Birdwood that the pensions are inadequate. They have been accepted by the administrative Departments as being inadequate in peace-time, even though in peace-time the number of officers who die soon after they retire is fortunately very small and so the widow's pension does not come into operation.

In the country at the present time I think it is right to say the financial lot of the mass of the population has been improved. After all, £12,000,000 a week in small savings means that even the poorer families are putting money into the national bank. But I wonder how much of that £12,000,000 a week comes from officers in the Services, and still more do I wonder how much can come from their widows. Obviously they are unable in the vast majority of cases to save money in that way because their emoluments are insufficient. If that is so, my Lords, let us consider one fact. I will not take you through the figures which my noble and gallant friend has already given you, but I should like to mention one fact in relation to these rates of pensions and allowances before the war and at the present moment. They have been increased. The peace-time pension, for instance, for the widow of a Captain in His Majesty's Navy, an officer of vast responsibility, was £200, and £200 is not very much for an officer's widow. When the war came that pension was increased to £230 and the children's allowance from £24 a year to £36. That is roughly an increase of something like 45 per cent. on the average. But that 45 per cent. is not really an increase, because it is entirely taken up by the higher costs of living for the widow and her children.

If you consider the case of the war entry to which my noble and gallant friend has referred, you will find that the lot of the officers who have joined the Navy during the war is exceedingly hard. It is quite true that there will be exactly the same pension for their widows and the same children's allowances as are given in the case of widows whose pensions are given partly on account of past years of service by their husbands, but you must remember that a Sub-Lieutenant or a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve who joined during the war is a man of considerable years. He has given up everything, he has perhaps lost his business, and if a man like that, perhaps thirty-five years of age, is killed in a motor torpedo boat in the Channel his widow is left with something like £200 a year with which to look after herself and her children. These officers who know that either in their ships, or in their regiments, or in their aircraft they may at any moment have to give their lives for their country, must have in their minds the feeling that the more brave they are the worse the prospects for those they are leaving behind. It must affect their mentality.

It cannot be right that a man who is receiving, say, £800 a year, as Captain of a big ship should know that if he is killed immediately his children are going to lose 60 per cent. or more of their income. I do not think that your Lordships can think that that is fair, and I hope you will impress your view upon the noble Viscount who is going to reply for the Government. We know that he has not come here ready to surrender the fort. He has his instructions. Obviously, he cannot say: "After what I have heard I will put things right." But he can at least convey to His Majesty's Government the strength of the feeling which I am sure must animate your Lordships that the situation at the present time of the widows and children of officers killed in action is not fair and is not creditable to a country so rich as ours.

LORD KEYES

My Lords, my noble and gallant friend the Earl of Cork made a most moving appeal for generous treatment for the children of officers killed in action. The noble and gallant Field Marshal Lord Birdwood and Lord Chatfield appealed generally for improvement in pensions. I want to make a plea for more generous treatment for the dependants of Convoy Commodores. Nearly all of these officers have held Flag rank and enjoyed the amenities accompanying it. All have commanded either battleships or, in the case of some R.N.R. officers, great liners. They were all in retirement after long years of service, and with every prospect of several more years of life in which to start their children in the world and educate them. On the outbreak of war they gave up everything in order to come forward so that their great experience might be put at the disposal of the Naval Service. In nearly all cases they went through great hardships and discomforts in small tramp steamers and other merchant vessels, and a very large proportion of them have lost their lives.

In the last war the widow of a Convoy Commodore received a pension of from £300 to £310 a year. At the commencement of this war if a Rear-Admiral was killed when in command of a convoy as a Commodore his widow received £240 a year. A good deal of resentment was felt and the matter was raised in another place. In order to bring the pensions of a Commodore's dependants into line with those of dependants of Civil Defence personnel—and some credit was taken for this increase—the pension of a Commodore's widow was raised from £240 to £260. This figure was still £40 or £50 less than the rate of pension granted in the last war. Recently the matter was raised again, as Lord Cork has reminded your Lordships, and it is satisfactory to know that the pension has been raised by another £30, so that the Commodore's widow has got up to as much as £290 a year.

But I do feel that these splendid officers, who have shown such an example of patriotism and service, might at least be treated more generously. Why should not these pensions be given in accordance with the rank which in many cases these officers had reached after serving the country for perhaps thirty or forty years? Why, because they have accepted this hazardous and arduous service, and have agreed to degrade themselves two or three steps in rank, should their widows receive only the pension commensurate with the rank held at the time of death? I think that without straining any point at all that at least might be granted. I wish most whole-heartedly to support the appeal of my noble and gallant friend the Earl of Cork, I know that it is only by continual pressure like this that in the end you will bring about what I am sure your Lordships all desire —namely, more generous treatment for the widows and children of those gallant men who have given their lives in the service of their country.

LORD BIRDWOOD

My Lords, with your Lordships' permission may I make a very slight alteration in regard to a statement which I made a few minutes ago? I then stated that in the case of warrant officers and others to whom I am referring 50 per cent. Income Tax was deducted from their pay. That is correct, but I wish to add that they are entitled to a certain amount of rebate on certain portions of the pensions. I should like to make that quite clear because it might be thought that actually 50 per cent. was deducted from the whole of their pay, which is not quite the case.

VISCOUNT CLIFDEN

My Lords, it is difficult, if not impossible, to consider any single item in the War Pensions Code by itself and without reference to the Code as a whole and to its actual history, at any rate since the war of 1914–18. The Select Committee of 1919 which investigated the whole system of war pensions fixed a central point of 40s. weekly for a totally disabled private soldier or his equivalent in the other Services. To this central point was linked the disablement scales for the non-commissioned and commissioned officer, and, in turn, the rate for widow's pensions was fixed at two-thirds of the rate for a totally disabled man or officer according to rank, with children's allowances in proportion. The key figure of 40s. for the totally disabled private soldier was related to the then cost-of-living index figure. This is, roughly, the structure around which our present Code is built.

It is rather difficult, of course, at the present time, to throw one's mind back to the figures of twenty years ago, and to make an accurate picture of the position which then existed. People, I think, are more inclined to think only of the cost-of-living figures in the years immediately before the present war and rather to forget the very great fall in these figures which took place in the years intervening between the two wars. The true position is that the cost-of-living figure of to-day is some 7½ per cent. below that of 1919, and as the rates of war pensions set out in the recent Command Paper, which has been referred to by the noble and gallant Earl, are broadly the same as those fixed in 1919, it is, I think, clear that the Code as a whole is more favourable now than the Royal Warrant of 1919 was at that time. In particular the officer's children's allowances to which the noble and gallant Earl's Motion specially refers have been increased, as he has told your Lordships, from £33 to £36 a year, which was the rate fixed in 1919. The previous rate of £33 a year was as nearly as possible the equivalent, on the present cost-of-living basis, to the rate of £36 a year in 1919. Thus the children of this war are getting the full benefit of the decision taken by the Government in 1928 not to apply the Warrant provision that pension rates should be reduced as the cost of living fell. They are, in fact, not reduced. It was also decided that they should never fall below the figure in operation at that date.

The Government can therefore only feel that while everyone—including, I know, all your Lordships—would wish to act as liberally as possible to all victims of the war, the present rates cannot be regarded as being ungenerous in relation to the provision which has been generally accepted as satisfactory ever since 1919. It must be further borne in mind, as the noble and gallant Earl, Lord Cork, has reminded your Lordships, that the allowance for each child can be supplemented where necessary by a special grant up to £50 a year towards education expenses, that is, up to a total of £86 a year for each child receiving education. I may add that if that £86 is not adequate for the proper education of the child, help can be obtained from other sources, not from the Treasury but from certain organizations which provide help.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

The noble Viscount will remember that that education allowance is not payable until the child is eight years old. There are therefore eight years before the widow can obtain that education allowance.

VISCOUNT CLIFDEN

Well, I can only promise to point that out to the Minister. I was not aware of that fact. With regard to the observations of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Birdwood, I think he was perhaps confusing Service pensions with disability pensions. The Chancellor of the Exchequer's reply to which he referred only dealt with pensions for service of retired Army officers and civil servants, etc., and that, of course, has no connexion with pensions for death and disability. The question of Income Tax applies to all widows, including other ranks, and that is a Government decision. But the lower rates of pension are not subject to Income Tax. With regard to the speech of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Chatfield, I think here again there is some slight misunderstanding about the Motion. We are concerned to-day only with allowances in the case of death or disablement arising from war service. Some of the arguments put forward by your Lordships to-day are mainly concerned with Service pay and allowances, which are, of course, a separate matter. Lord Chatfield's point does not really concern us this afternoon. If a retired officer dies under ordinary civil conditions the matter is not one for the Ministry of Pensions, who can only deal with the cases of death or disablement arising from war service and its effects.

LORD CHATFIELD

I do not think it is quite right to say that my reference to the circumstances of peace are irrelevant to the debate this afternoon. When these rates of allowances for the widows and children were fixed, it was in 1919, in peace time after the last war, and those rates were established as suitable for peace conditions. The rates of the present day are based on those peace rates entirely, plus what is called an allowance for cost of living of some 45 to 50 per cent. increase. But the basis of the war allowance is the peace allowance established in 1919, and therefore I think my remarks were relevant to the debate.

VISCOUNT CLIFDEN

Here again I will certainly make it my business to draw the attention of the Minister to what the noble and gallant Lord has said. With regard to the case put forward by the noble and gallant Admiral, Lord Keyes, the case of Admirals and Commodores, I think I may say that the Ministry of Pensions view these cases with great sympathy, and have made special efforts to satisfy the cases which are no doubt in the mind of the noble and gallant Lord. I will certainly not fail to bring to the notice of the Minister the observations put forward by the noble and gallant Earl and other Lords who have spoken this afternoon.

LORD BIRDWOOD

Is it the intention to implement the promise made in the Royal Warrant of 1919 to increase the pension by 20 per cent., according to the cost of living?

VISCOUNT CLIFDEN

I understand that the pensions will not be reduced if the cost of living falls.

LORD BIRDWOOD

But when the cost of living rises? What we want to know is if they can count on receiving that 20 per cent. increase which the Royal Warrant definitely promises if the cost of living justifies it.

VISCOUNT CLIFDEN

If it is promised no doubt it will be performed.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

My Lords, your Lordships are no doubt well aware of the difficulties under which the noble Viscount labours in giving an answer for the Government. The Department for which he speaks has not heard the eloquent speeches which were made by my noble friends on these Benches, and the noble Viscount had no alternative but to give the official reply. But I think your Lordships will agree that the official reply was hardly a sympathetic one and by no means encouraging. The noble Lords who have spoken have not only made a very eloquent appeal on those matters of justice which are uppermost in all our minds especially at the present time, but they have touched on a much wider subject than that, and that is the subject of the rising generation, and the enormous number of children who will suffer by these very meagre provisions which are made for them as a sort of reward for the gallant services rendered by their fathers. I think that we have every cause to regret the reply which we have received to-day, and I hope that the noble and gallant Earl will go to a Division, because I feel that it should go out to the country that your Lordships do not think the reply is in any sense satisfactory and that we protest against the manner in which the services of these gallant men are being requited.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his reply, out I do not think it gives any satisfaction at all. To say that the terms are generous according to the present Code is in contradiction of what I ask the House to say by my Motion. I do not withdraw, I am going to divide on my Motion

LORD SNELL

My Lords, I hope the noble and gallant Earl will feel that his purpose has been attained if the remarks that he and others have made are conveyed to the proper authorities, and that consideration will be given to the whole question. It is a matter in which all of us feel interested, and I think it would be a pity to divide the House on such a matter. I hope the noble and gallant Earl will be willing not to do so.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

My Lords, I am sorry that I cannot agree to the request of my noble friend. I feel very deeply on this subject, and nothing could be more exhilarating for these people than to know that the House of Lords is at their back and wishes to see this injustice remedied.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House adjourned during pleasure, and resumed by The LORD CHANCELLOR.

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