War Widows’ Pension Scheme

Debate between Julian Lewis and Allan Dorans

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

That has been said. That is what David Cameron did, and that is now the situation. The argument arises because of the small cohort who between those years did not have their pension reinstated. Thanks to my gallant friend’s intervention, I now have the exact date of that previous debate. It was on 22 November 2018, and it is easily accessible in Hansard, or, even more easily, in the “Commons Speeches” section of my website.

I first quoted Linda, whose husband John was murdered by the IRA in May 1973 by a booby-trap bomb. She explained:

“In the early 70s War Widows were visited by inspectors to ensure they were not living with another man whilst in receipt of their compensation pension. I felt degraded by this. Life was lonely as a young women with a baby and over time I missed the family life I so tragically had taken from me. I missed my son having a father, I missed the closeness and friendship of a husband…As was stated in 2015 this was a choice—”

the fact that she had to give up her pension on remarriage—

“that should not have been forced on War Widows. I was personally heartbroken when I was told that pension changes in 2015 had left me behind. The utter disbelief that the Government didn’t really mean ALL War Widows would now have their pensions for life was unbearable. These changes made me feel like a second class War Widow and I have now been made to relive the pain and grief of 1973 every day. I cannot and will not accept that John’s sacrifice is less worthy than others.”

I read out four more testimonies on that occasion, but I do not have time to do that again. Instead, I shall refer to two testimonies that I did not previously have time to read out. One was from someone who was bereaved not during Operation Banner in Northern Ireland, but in Iraq in 2003.

Raqual lost her husband Matt there.

“If anything happens to me”,

he wrote immediately before deploying,

“I want you and our son and our baby to be happy. Meet someone else and give our children a loving home. You won’t need to worry about money as you will be financially independent”—

he thought—

“and able to give our children what they deserve!”

Eight weeks later, she was a widow. Eight years later, she remarried. Upon remarriage, she writes:

“I surrendered my War Widows’ Pension as I had to do and increased my hours of work to compensate for this loss of income.

Being able to support my children independently was and still is very important to me and to Matt’s memory. I would never expect my new husband to have to do this. And then came the decision to allow widows to retain their pensions on remarriage, but only if they remarried after April 2015.

I am so pleased for the widows who will benefit from this. But I hold the values of fairness and equality in high regard, and we are now in a situation which is neither fair nor equal. Even now, I simply can’t get my head around the fact that had I waited four more years to remarry I would have kept my pension for life. How can it be fair that someone who remarried on the 31 March 2015 lost their pension, and yet 24 hours later someone in the exact same position would keep theirs!!!???”

[Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Raqual is a constituent of mine. At the time of her husband’s tragic death in 2003, they already had one child and she was 12 weeks pregnant with her second child. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that children of fallen servicemen deserve the financial security of a pension, paid into by their father during his time of service, if for no other reason than the memory of the man who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country?

[Dr Lewis]

I agree totally. I thank the hon. Gentleman, a new Member from the opposite side of the House, for taking the time and the trouble to participate in this short debate.

My final extract from testimony is from Elizabeth, the widow of Ronnie, who was murdered in Northern Ireland. She says:

“I was devastated by his murder and went into deep shock…Due to my depression, I was on injections for months, but I just couldn’t get out of my feeling of hopelessness. The authorities threatened a number of times to put me into a secure hospital if I did not improve. I had a friend who stayed with me every night for almost eighteen months. The children didn’t want me to go anywhere as they thought that I might be murdered like their daddy. I just couldn’t believe he was gone, and for a long time, when I made the tea, I set a place out for him, almost believing he was coming home.”

She concludes:

“It makes me so angry and sad that the government took the pension away, it’s almost as if they stole it off me. My first husband Ronnie was a brave man, and he answered the call to join up, and I will always be proud of him.

As I get older, that pension would be such a help, and it would also be an acknowledgement by the government that taking it away was wrong and we deserve it for Ronnie laying down his life for his country.”

Time is defeating me and I want the Minister to have time to reply, so let me just move forward by saying that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), the new Chairman of the Defence Committee, appeared before the Committee on 19 March 2019 during the course of one of our annual inquiries into the armed forces covenant. At the time, I asked him how this matter was progressing. He explained that the then Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) who is now the Secretary of State for Education, had already written to the Treasury. They were awaiting a reply and were in the hands of the Treasury. I now have a copy of a letter that was sent on 12 February 2019 by the then Defence Secretary asking that the Treasury reinstate all war pension scheme widows’ pensions and armed forces pension scheme widows’ pensions for the people concerned. He explained that the Treasury had previously refused; but this was a letter that he had actually sent to the Prime Minister. I also have a report, which I do not have time to read, from the Daily Express on 9 March, which stated that the then Prime Minister had said that this needed to be got done. Since then, what? Nothing. The months have gone by, and nothing has been done.

What is the way forward? It is to do what the chairman of the War Widows’ Association—Mary, who lost her husband to the IRA during the troubles—and others have recommended all along, namely to reclassify this award as compensation for sacrifice, and not a benefit that should in any way be affected by a change in a person’s financial or other circumstances.

I mentioned former Prime Minister David Cameron, and said that he did his best to sort out this problem. I want to give him a pat on the back for how he sorted out a previous problem to do with a campaign in which I was involved to get belated recognition for the Arctic convoy veterans, who had not had a campaign star. All the same objections were raised as are raised by the Treasury now—about precedents, Pandora’s boxes and all the rest of it—and in the end Mr Cameron said, “Just do it.”

I know that successive Defence Secretaries have wanted this done. I know that the Minister, who was a member of the Select Committee when we were going over all this, wants it done. It has to be done. The situation is a disgrace. I hope that the change in Chancellor might conceivably have removed an irresistible force or an immoveable object, or whatever metaphor we want to use, that was disgracefully holding things up. This has to be dealt with now. We cannot wait for these ladies—those affected overwhelmingly are ladies—to die before we finally recognise that a shocking and indefensible injustice has been perpetrated.