War Widows: Ex Gratia Pension Payment

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the work that the noble Baroness has done campaigning in this area. Some of the applications for the award have been rejected, and I am happy to share the statistics with the House: 72 individuals have not been accepted for a reward. However, the Ministry of Defence denies that the eligibility criteria have changed: 49 of those were already in receipt of financial reward for their bereavement; 10 are eligible for their war widow’s pension to be reinstated due to no longer being in a relationship that led to the original forfeiture; and 13 have had their initial claim rejected because of either insufficient evidence or because their partner sadly passed away from a non-service attributable death.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I too declare an interest as a vice-president of the War Widows’ Association. We were so hopeful that the war widows who had missed out would at last have their cases sympathetically solved, but following on from my noble friend’s Question, it appears that it was decided late in the day that the ex gratia payment would not be for all those who forfeited their war widow’s pension but for those who forfeited an attributable pension before 2000, which is nothing to do with the war pensions scheme. Under this new scheme, the Minister has told us how many widows have benefited; can he say, given how canny the MoD is with any money for widows, how much money it has actually paid out to date?

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

I understand what the noble Baroness is asking, but my mental arithmetic is not good enough to multiply the ex gratia payment amount by the number of awards paid out, so I will write to her.