War Pensions (Hansard, 29 July 1997)

§ Mr. Levitt
To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if she will review the legislative and regulatory provisions relating to entitlement to war pensions in respect of noise-induced hearing loss in addition to the medical and scientific review. [3565]

§ Mr. Denham
The independent review arises solely from our desire to show that the scientific evidence is clear and unambiguous for the purposes of assessing disablement under the existing legislation. We have no plans to review the legal provisions themselves.
241W

§ Mr. Goggins
To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans she has to review the discretion which local authorities have to vary the level of war pension which is disregarded when calculating housing and council tax benefit. [9142]

§ Mr. Keith Bradley
The present arrangements for disregarding war pensions aim to strike a balance between acknowledging the special reasons for payment of the pension and the proper use of public funds. War pensioners already receive preferential treatment and benefit from many advantages over their social security counterparts.
The discretion that local authorities have to disregard a war disablement pension or a war widow's pension combined with the statutory disregard afford a special treatment to war pensioners and war widows.
We have no plans to review the present arrangements for disregarding war pensions.