War widows told to keep fighting
A CONSERVATIVE peer has told campaigning war widows: “Don’t let the Government off the hook.”
At the War Widows’ Association AGM, Lord Harlech listened to heart-rending accounts of how the women were stripped of their pensions on re-marriage.
He told them: “Your words have been heard and I will do everything I can to put things right. Please, please do keep going.”
The Government whip accepted a private invitation to the meeting in Stratford-uponAvon after a heated House of Lords debate over ex-gratia payments to those who lost their pension because they remarried or cohabited with a partner before 2015.
Around 300 women whose husbands died serving their country missed out on the £7,500 a year. Shockingly, if they were to divorce their new husband – or were widowed again – they would get the money.
The Daily Express has campaigned with them for the pension to be reinstated.
An £87,500 one-off Recognition Payment was agreed last year. But a change in criteria means dozens have suddenly been excluded. The Ministry of Defence says the WWA was “kept fully informed” of the qualifying criteria – a claim the charity denies.
Jude Howcroft was six months pregnant when she was widowed in 1998 and is one of those currently missing out. Addressing the peer, she said: “We are being discriminated against for having the audacity to fall in love and create a new family for our children. It is really, really hurtful.”
WWA vice-president Baroness Garden said the sums of money involved were “a pittance”.
Paul Booth, an associate member, said he had married a war widow 28 years ago.
He said: “She will always be a war widow. The fact that I married her doesn’t stop her being a war widow.”