Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate his Department has made of the cost to the public purse of fully exempting war disablement pensions from means tests for social care in (a) England, (b) Wales, (c) Scotland and (d) Northern Ireland in 2014-15.

Officials in the Department have been working closely with the Royal British Legion to consider the issue of applying a disregard in the social care charging rules to payments under the War Pension Scheme. This includes working to establish an assessment of what the costs would be of applying such a disregard.

However, the Department is unable to provide a robust estimate at this time due to a lack of data on the numbers of war pensions currently receiving social care; the cost of that support and any amount of contributions they may currently be making. Further work is therefore needed and the officials are continuing to work with the Royal British Legion and others to refine these costs.