Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will amend existing legislation relating to police widow pensions to bring parity with other public sector pensions.

In common with other public sector pensions, the police pension schemes provide a pension for the widow, widower or civil partner of a police officer who dies. For the 2006 and 2015 police pension schemes that pension is paid for life regardless of future remarriage, civil partnership or cohabitation. As the Home Secretary announced in the House of Commons on 12 October 2015, in recognition of the level of risk that police officers face in the execution of their duty, the 1987 Police Pension Scheme will shortly be amended to ensure that widows, widowers and surviving civil partners of police officers who died on duty in England and Wales will no longer lose their survivors’ benefits if they remarry, form a civil partnership or cohabit in the future. The Government will lay these regulations in the coming weeks and the change will be backdated to 1 April 2015.