Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make it his policy to extend entitlement to a late spouse's teacher's pension to remarried surviving spouses of teachers who retired or died before January 2007.

Pensions were introduced for the widows of teachers in 1972. Spousal pensions were then extended to include widowers and civil partners. Up until 2007, funding of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) was on the basis that partner pensions would cease, should the dependent partner remarry or enter a civil partnership.

In 2007, the rules governing survivor pensions were changed to ensure that any pension which becomes payable to a surviving spouse or civil partner, where the member had service in the TPS after 1 January 2007, will be paid for life. There are no plans to retrospectively apply this amendment to those who retired, or otherwise left the TPS, before the regulations were changed.