§ Lord Craig of Radleyasked Her Majesty's Government:
How many applications for reinstatement of war widows pension have been received; how many, so far, have been approved and paid in full from the entitled date; and why it may take up to nine months since the changes to the pension rules before the majority of these claims will have been dealt with by the War Pensions Agency.
The Minister of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish): These are matters for Mr. John Sheppard, the Acting Chief Executive of the War Pensions Agency. He will write to the noble Lord.
Letter to Lord Craig of Radley from the Acting Chief Executive of the War Pensions Agency, Mr. John Sheppard, dated 20/12/95:
The Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish has asked me to reply to your recent parliamentary Question about the implementation of the provisions of the Pensions Act 1995, dealing with the restoration of a war widow's pension on second widowhood.
It was estimated that there would be in the order of 16,500 awards under these provisions and I can confirm that as at 8 December, 11,321 claims have been received. Decisions have been made in 7,375 cases, of which 2,326 have been notified and 1,861 paid. The reason for the interval between decision and payment is because once entitlement has been determined, we have to make enquiries as to whether other benefits already paid need to be taken into account before payment can be made.
I can assure you that we are dealing with the claims as quickly as possible. Operational areas of the agency were already going through major reorganisation and change this year with the introduction of a new computer system and new ways of working and the reinstatement of the war widows' pension represented a further major change. Originally, it was expected that the Pensions Bill would not become law until October this year. In fact, as you know, the Bill became law in July and the agency's plans to deal with this had to be implemented three months earlier than expected.
To introduce such a major change, the agency has had to set up new procedures and supporting material, recruit and train staff and reprogramme our computer to handle the new claims. While we tried to do as much of this as possible in advance, you will appreciate that we could not anticipate the legislation. In addition, all this has had to be completed at a time when resources have been fully stretched within the organisation. Nevertheless, we have been able to put together a dedicated team of 45 people on this work.
Although initial press announcements indicated we would start dealing with claims from October, our own 13WA initial objective was to start making payments from October, and this we were still able to do. Our aim is to have cleared the majority of claims by the end of the financial year.
I hope you find my reply helpful.