Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the average length of time to process a war pension is as of 18 February 2022.

The average clearance time for claims between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022 is due to be published as part of the War Pension Scheme Annual National Statistic on 23 June 2022.

For the purposes of generating internal monthly management information to monitor performance against the Key Performance Indicator of 127 working days for War Pensions claims, Defence Business Services calculates the mean clearance time of all claims types. It should be noted that performance management information may differ from Official National Statistics when published.

As of 18 February 2022, the average clearance time performance management information for all War Pension Scheme claim types was 166 working days. This is an increase on the 141 days as at 31 December 2021 given in my answer to Question 108583 on 28 January 2022, and is due to the recent clearance of a number of older cases. It is anticipated that average clearance times will now begin to fall.