WAR PENSIONS INQUIRY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 71, Issue 36, 22 November 1950, Page 6

WAR PENSIONS INQUIRY

SUBMISSIONS HEARD AT AUCKLAND SUBSTITUTE FOR APPEAL BOARD SOUGHT (P.A.) AUCKLAND, Nov. 21. Submissions for the amendment of the provisions of the War Pensions Act, 1943, and suggestions for improvements to its administration were made by representatives of several former servicemen’s and interested organisations to the commission of inquiry into war pensions, which began its Auckland sitting to-day. The chairman is Mr E. A. Lee, S.M., and the two other members are Messrs B. J. Jacobs and H. R. C. Wild. The commission will hear evidence in Auckland until Friday, when it will leave for Dunedin. The abolition of the War Pensions Appeal Board and the appointment of a single person with judicial or at least magisterial status as an appellate tribunal were advocated by Mr J. N. Wilson, counsel for the 2nd N.Z.E.F. Association. Certain sections of the War Pensions Act, he said, had been in practice nullified by their manner of application. It was often impossible to ascertain the reasons for many of the decisions of the War Pensions Board. Supporting the claims made to the commission in Wellington by the executive committee of the New Zealand War Amputees’ Association, Mr T. O. Brown, of the Auckland branch, asked that war amputees should be paid a bonus sufficiently large to bring the purchasing power of the present pension to the level of the 1917 figure, when the basis was fixed, while allowing for the fact that commodities considered luxuries in 1917 were now necessaries. Wives of amputees should be paid a pension of £2 a week as of right, he added. These people rendered the serviceman and the country an excellent service, the burden of which would he lightened if they were free from financial concern. An increase in the basic pension for war widows whose children had grown beyond the dependent stage was advocated by Mrs E. V. Barlow, president of the Auckland War Widows’ Association. At present they received £3 17s 6d a week, which was insufficient to maintain the standards they .enjoyed while their husbands were alive. Her association would like pensions to be paid by cheque, as allotments were made during the war. Mr H. Thaselden, secretary of the welfare committee of the Auckland Provincial Patriotic Council, said that his committee often made grants to bridge the gap between the time an application for a pension w T as made and the money was received. This was frequently from eight to 10 weeks.