§ Mr. FrenchTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assessment his Department has made of the probable cost of making payments under the armed forces pensions scheme to the widows of service men who retired before 6 April 1978, and subsequently remarried. [18333]
§ Mr. SoamesMy Department has no record of the number of marriages which were contracted before 1978 by former service men after their retirement, and it is not possible, therefore, to provide an accurate estimate of the cost of awarding pensions to their widows from these marriages. In broad terms, however, my Department has assessed that the final cost of recognising all service prior to 1978 in the case of post-retirement marriages could amount to about £60 million in total for the armed forces.