Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if her Department will review the right to preserved pensions for members of the armed forces who retired before the introduction of the armed forces pension scheme 1975.

Before April 1975, there was no legal requirement for a pension scheme to preserve pension rights for those who left service before reaching the normal retirement age.

The issue of pre-1975 pensions does not just affect the Armed Forces but is common to all other public service schemes in existence prior to the Social Security Act 1973.

It has been the policy of successive Governments not to make retrospective changes to pension schemes.