Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, when designing the application process for the armed forces pension, what weight his Department gave to the ease of use of the system.

The Armed Forces Pension Scheme is an occupational pension scheme whereby the recipient has entitlement based on their reckonable service in HM Forces. Every effort is made to make the Armed Forces Pension Scheme application form (Pen1) as simple as possible whilst ensuring that all salient points are included, particularly for legal reasons.

There is an online version of the application form which pre-fills several boxes using data taken directly from the Service person’s record. Current statistics on its use against paper applications are below which demonstrates its success.