WAR PENSIONS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24869, 8 May 1946, Page 10

WAR PENSIONS

Sir, —Your issue of April 6 reports an announcement by the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser) regarding pensions. In summarising the proposed widened scope ,of war pensions it states: “The following table shows the pension under the new scale, payable, to a former serviceman, his wife, ' and, say, two dependent children m cases of 50 per cent, disablement:— Serviceman’s disablement pension, £1 10s; possible economic pension, £1 15s; mother’s allowance, £1 10s; pension of 10s a week for each of two children.” The statement says that the wile is to receive a mother’s allowance of £1 10s and pension of 10s for each child. One learns at the pensions office, however, that all but the serviceman’s pension and the children’s allowance are subject, to the usual old means test; so that’ the part relating to the mother’s allowance would appear to be either an error in transmission or else, wittingly or unwittingly, just a hoax by the Prime Minister.—Yours, etc., HOW COME? April 28, 1946. [Commenting on this letter, the -Secretary for War Pensions (Mr H. Digby Smith) says: “The position is that the economic pension and the wife’s allowance are subject to a means test, as they always have been. However, the former serviceman and his wife referred to can receive 30s weekly by way cf income from sources other than pension and allowance without affecting rates of pension £nd allowance referred to. Thus, the family’s income from all sources could be as follows: disability pension, £1 10s a week; economic pension, £1 15s; wife’s allowance, £1 10s; pension for two children, £1; other allowed, £1 10s; total, £7 5s a week.”]