War Pensions and Armed Forces Compensation Scheme Payments

Leo Docherty Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)]

I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) for securing this important debate. I thank him for the words he spoke about his constituent, and we thank his constituent for his service; I look forward to continuing that correspondence, which I know to be of long standing.

The hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out that this is a relevant debate, given events in Ukraine, and pointed out that wars are fought not by armies, but by individuals. That is a very good point, and I agree that we must show compassion, recognition and respect. I must say that I do not concur with his overwhelmingly damning indictment of the system as it stands, but it is important that we are always seeking improvement. We are seeking improvement first in the speed of a claim, but also in customer service. However, I reiterate that this is not about saving money.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

rose—

[Leo Docherty]

I will give way very briefly, but we are pushed for time.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

The Minister is talking about constant improvements. I rise on behalf of my constituent, who in 2018 received a pension benefit forecast with an annual Army pension and a terminal benefit. In July last year he was told, in a letter from the Ministry of Defence, that he was no longer eligible for an Army pension. I wrote to the Minister in July last year on his behalf, but I have had neither acknowledgment nor reply. I have tried on many occasions to raise this matter, and I am now doing so in the Chamber. Will the Minister commit to meeting me to discuss my constituent’s case?

[Leo Docherty]

We will pursue that immediately. I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for the opportunity.

We will seek to improve speed and quality. We will not be just tinkering in the way we improve things; we are serious, because we know that we will be judged on our failures in this regard. I will briefly mention contributions by other hon. Members before I get on to putting some of the broader issues in context.

I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland), who has a long-standing interest in this field. He talked about our moral responsibility to veterans—I agree with him—and his interesting ideas about the role of the VAPCs offer food for thought. The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar) raised the very concerning case of her constituent, and mentioned the good work of the Scottish Veterans Commissioner. I join her in commending that role.

The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) also raised a constituent’s case, and spoke about the convoluted nature of the process. I accept that that is the case, and that is exactly what we want to change by moving away from the paper process. The hon Member—my honourable friend—for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) mentioned the important role of service charities, but I would argue that they augment the role of the state rather than replacing it, and we should be very proud of that.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly highlighted his concerns about his constituents in Northern Ireland. I look forward to visiting him there soon. The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) called for the reformation of the war pensions system, and that is exactly what we are getting after. I was grateful for the variety of comments made by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock), who made a range of points, some of which I will address now.

First, I must set the context. We must bear it in mind that Veterans UK makes 106,000 monthly payments to recipients of the war pensions scheme and the armed forces compensation scheme. Those payments are tax free and linked to inflation through the consumer prices index. There are around 6,500 applications and 1,000 appeals and reconsiderations currently being processed. I am just trying to give a sense of the scale.

All that costs Her Majesty’s Government £736.3 million a year, £652 million under the war pensions scheme and £84.3 million under the armed forces compensation scheme. It is an operation of huge scale, and justifiably so, because it recognises the scale of the service of our magnificent veterans’ community, which comprises more than 2 million people, but in an organisation of that size there will of course be some cases that do not get the appropriate level of service.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will the Minister find time to update the House on the progress of a small-scale matter but an important one—the cohort of about 250 war widows who lost their pensions on co-habitational remarriage and did not get them back when the law changed?

[Leo Docherty]

My right hon. Friend has been a long-standing campaigner on this. I hope we are making progress and I look forward to meeting him soon to update him.

Of the 106,000 awards, 154 complaints were received, so that is a 0.1% failure rate. Of course any failure is unsatisfactory and we want to reduce that number to absolutely zero, but I am just trying to give a sense of the scale of the system. The staff at Norcross are working their hardest in difficult conditions, and they do receive significant numbers of thank-yous, so I should put that on the record. It is a real problem that they are working with an antiquated system of paper records from many different sources of information that they have to bring together. The armed forces compensation scheme now has an average target time to resolve cases of 90 days, which is being met, and the war pensions scheme has an average target time of 127 days, which is falling short, but that is because they are trying to get rid of the backlog, which we all seek to clear, as the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston asked. We should do that with empathy and thoroughness. The future will be better. We recognise that we can do more. That is why we are injecting £40 million into digitising both schemes, which will result in a quicker process. The pilot that has just taken place resulted in something that previously took six weeks with the paper system now taking six hours. We hope that the new digital system will launch at the end of 2023.

In tandem with those mechanical and procedural improvements, we are cognisant that we must inject more empathy into the process. Veterans UK is therefore conducting lived-experience roundtables bringing together veterans directly with its staff to hear about their service and adjusting their customer service style accordingly. On that note, I invite the hon. Member for Midlothian, on the back of this debate, if he would like to engage with the staff at Vets UK to try to be a part of the solution. We would be very grateful and I would look forward to affording that opportunity.

We are determined to improve the service to all those in receipt of payments from both schemes because they deserve nothing less than a first-rate service, as they deserve the gratitude and respect of the whole nation.