Forces Widows Pensions (Equality of Treatment) Bill 2008-09

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House	Bill	Date
	Bill as introduced | PDF version, 78KB	04.06.2009

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Latest news on the Forces Widows Pensions (Equality of Treatment) Bill 2008-09

This Bill was presented to Parliament on 21 January. This is known as First Reading and there was no debate on the Bill at this stage.

This Bill was on the Order Paper for a Second Reading on several Fridays before being dropped by its sponsor, Mr Michael Mates.

 

Summary of the Forces Widows Pensions (Equality of Treatment) Bill 2008-09

Until 1973, the widow of a retired serviceman was entitled to a pension equal to one third of the pension their spouse had earned. In 1973, a number of improvements to the Armed Forces Pension Scheme were introduced, one of which was to increase the service widow’s pensions to half the spouse’s rate of pension. However, this improvement applied only to that part of the spouse’s pension earned by service on or after 31 March 1973.

The Bill would provide for armed forces pensions to be paid to surviving spouses and civil partners of deceased armed forces personnel who retired from service:
    (a) before 31 March 1973 and
    (b) between 31 March 1973 and 6 April 2005
to be calculated and paid on the same basis.

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