War Pensions

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 179, 14 July 1927, Page 5

War Pensions

Principal Powers’ Expenditure.

COMPARATIVE FIGURES. BRITISH EMPIRE’S BIG PAY OUT. (British Official Wireless). (Received 14, 1.0 p.m.) Rugby, July 13. Comparative figures ot expenditure on war pensions by some of the principal belligerent Powers in the late war were given in the House of Commons to-day when the pensions vote, of £57,250,000 for ad classes of pensions, was under discussion. This amount represents an £BO,OOO decrease on last year’s figure, due to the deaths of pensioners and their dependants, to 60,000 more children reaching the age at which pensions are no longer payable, and to the re-marriage of a further 4,500 war widows. The total number of pensions now is 1,650,000. The expenditure of the Ministry in 1925-1926 was, in round figures £66,500,000- A year’s expenditure on Great War pensions for the same period in the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and Newfoundland was £19,500,000, making a total for the United Kingdom and the dominions of no less than £86,000,000; equivalent to an annual charge of 27/from every man, woman, nnd child in a population of 64,000,000. In France the expenditure for the same year was approximately £47,750,000, equivalent to a contribution of about 18/6 per head of their population. The German Empire’s expenditure for the same year was about £66,000,00, which, with a population of 62,500,000 - meant a contribution of about 19/2 per head. The United States’ expenditure was £46,000,000, and, with a population of 112,000,000 meant a contribution of about 8/3 per head. HAD NOT BEEN NIGGARDLY. Discussing these figures, Colonel Stanley, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions, said they were very striking and showed that the British Empire had not been niggardly in the way it had treated Sutterers in the war.

Referring to the maintenance of children under the care of the Ministry of Pensions, Colonel Stanley said that £98,500,000 had been spent under this heading since 1917 and the annual expenditure on which, which was of course, diminishing, was now about £8,000,000. The expenditure on the administration of the Pensions Ministry this year was reduced by 14 per cent., but expenditure on benefits had fallen by only 3) per cent. \