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Mr. Hancock: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if she will make it her policy to amend the pre- 2002 Civil Service PensionScheme to allow widows and widowers of civil servants who remarry or cohabit to retain their pension rights; and if she will make astatement. [190183]Ruth Kelly: I have no plans to do so.Until recently all public service pension schemes (and many in the private sector) only provided widows' and widowers' pensions upuntil the beneficiary remarries or cohabits with someone as their husband or wife. From October 2002, a new pension scheme for civilservants was introduced (known as premium) which has an improved benefit structure paid for by higher employee contributions. One ofthe improvements is to provide widows and widowers pensions for life. To provide a similar improvement in respect of the pre-October2002 scheme (known as classic), where higher contributions have not been paid, would not only be unfair to the members of premiumwho are paying higher contributions for enhanced benefits, but would also result in tax payers meeting the additional costs to theclassic scheme of doing so.Public service-wide additional costs for future service have been estimated at £150 million per annum, plus a one off cost of£3 billion to cover all past service. |