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Armed Forces: Pensions

Volume 494: debated on Monday 15 June 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will estimate the cost of paying pensions at an equivalent level for UK service people to (a) Commonwealth soldiers and (b) soldiers of other nationalities who served in the British armed forces between 1947 and 2004. (278716)

All non-British personnel serving now in the armed forces have exactly the same pension arrangements as the wider armed forces. It has long been Government policy not to implement improvements to pensions and similar benefits retrospectively, a policy that has been applied across the public sector in the United Kingdom. Information of the full cost of doing so is not available, however, it has been estimated that to pay retrospective pensions to Gurkhas would cost the MOD £1.5 billion.