Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent assessment he has made of the cost of restoring the war widows pension to people who had remarried or cohabited between 1973 and 2005.

My department has not made a recent assessment of the costs. It has been the policy of successive governments that retrospective changes to public service pension and compensation schemes should not be made where benefits have already been awarded. The Government currently has no plans to reinstate war widow(er)s pensions with retrospective effect.