§ Mr. MacDougallTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) how many widows of Royal Air Force service men have been affected by his Department's error in deducting tax wrongly from their pensions; [54163]
(2) how many (a) disabled ex-service men and (b) disabled ex-service women in the Royal Air Force have been affected by his Department's error in deducting tax wrongly from their pensions. [54164]
(3) how many widows of Royal Navy servicemen have been affected by his Department's error in deducting tax wrongly from their pensions; [54319]
(4) how many disabled ex-service (a) men and (b) women formerly in the Royal Navy have been affected by his Department's error in deducting tax wrongly from their pensions; [54321]
(5) what the total cost will be of the refund to disabled ex-servicemen formerly in the RAF and Royal Navy because of the error made by his Department in deducting tax wrongly from their pensions; [54320]
178W(6) for how many years his Department has known about its error in deducting tax from the pensions of disabled ex-servicemen formerly in (a) the Royal Navy and (b) the Royal Air Force. [54322]
§ Dr. Moonie[holding answer 7 May 2002]: The potential for the issue of mistaken taxation of service invaliding pensions to apply to the Royal Navy and RAF as well as the Army was identified only very recently. Work is continuing to identify the extent of the error and I am therefore unable at present to provide numbers of affected RN and RAF pensioners. The total cost of the tax refunds to be paid will not be known until this work has been completed. No widow(er)s are directly affected as all widow(er)s' pensions under the Armed Forces Pension Scheme are taxable, regardless of whether their spouse was in receipt of an attributable pension. Some may, however, be affected indirectly as beneficiaries of a pensioner's will.