§ Lord Boyd-Carpenterasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they intend to increase the pensions of elderly war widows so as to bring them into line with the pensions paid to war widows more recently widowed.
§ The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Lord Trefgarne)All war widows receive a war pension under the scheme administered by the Department of Health and Social Security. However, as a result of improvements made to the Armed Forces occupational scheme in 1973 a pension is also paid, under that scheme, to the widows of servicemen who were serving on or after 31st March 1973 and who die as a result of their service.
As I explained in the answer which I gave to the Lord Chelwood on 23rd July 1987 (Official Report, col. 1572), the additional cost of applying the improved provisions, from a current date, to those war widows who are not eligible would be about £200 million per year. There would also be much wider, and even more costly, implications of such a departure from the normal practice that improvements to occupational pension schemes are not made retrospective, and there are no plans to do so.