§ Colonel ASHLEYasked the Pensions Minister whether, in view of the fact that the service pension represents deferred pay and cannot be called present earnings, a deceased soldier's life service pension will not be reckoned as earned income in assessing the alternative pension of his widow?
§ Sir J. CRAIGFor the purposes of the alternative pension a service pension is considered to be income but not earnings. It is no doubt earned in the sense that the soldier has won it by past services, but it is not current earnings and cannot therefore he included in "the average weekly earnings of a soldier during the twelve months preceding the commencement of the war." It may be added that if a service pension were regarded as "earnings" it could not be ignored, as it now is, in assessing the earnings of which a disabled man who claims an alternative pension is to be judged capable.