e-mail Paul Lewis on paul@deadline.demon.co.uk
Local councils all over the country are taking war pensions away from disabled veterans and their widows to save money. A new and comprehensive survey by Saga Magazine, the first ever done outside government, shows that 110 councils out of the 458 in England, Wales, and Scotland take back some war pension from pensioners when they work out their entitlement to help with their rent or their council tax.
Someone who gets council tax benefit can lose nearly a fifth of their war pension. And someone who also gets housing benefit can lose as much as 72p in the £ of it. So someone deafened by artillery fire who gets £50.55 from the Department of Social Security for their disability will lose £32.44 of it in reduced benefits, keeping just £18.11 of it to compensate them for their deafness. In effect, these councils tax war pensions, sometimes at a rate which is nearly twice the 40% rate of income tax paid by the richest in the land.
The reason is that the amount of housing benefit and council tax benefit depend on the person's income. The Government allows councils to ignore war pensions when working out that income. But they do not have to. By law, they can count all but £10 of it. That can make the difference between an inured veteran keeping all the war pension and losing nearly three-quarters of it.
Ugly, good, and bad
The last official survey of what councils did about war pensions was done in 1990 and is no longer accurate. So to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War Two Saga Magazine decided to do a new one from scratch and ask every council in Great Britain what their policy was. The results make depressing reading. Thirty councils only do what the law makes them do. They ignore £10 of the war pensions of disabled veterans and their widows and then count all the rest as income, grabbing back up to 72% of a pension given tax free for life as compensation for war injuries.
On the other side are the 348 councils who respect the importance of what injured war veterans and their widows have gone through and accept that war pensions should be tax free and not means-tested. They all ignore war pensions completely when working out housing benefits. But these 348 councils make their own sacrifice. While the cost of housing benefit is largely paid by central Government out of taxation, the cost of giving this special treatment to war pensioners is paid for by the local council, and that means cutting other services or asking local council tax payers to pay more.
In the middle are 80 councils which do something but not enough. Some are almost as bad as the bottom thirty and others are close to the 348 good guys. They all ignore more than the statutory £10 but still count some of the pension for some people. Some count all the pension for widows but none of it for disabled veterans; others do it the other way round. Some ignore more than £10 - figures ranging from £13 to £109 were recorded in our research. Others use more complex formulae. Some ignore the basic war pension but then count as income the extra amounts given to very disabled veterans. The ingenuity of councillors who want to take money off war pensioners to help balance their budgets knows no bounds.
Changing
During our research we found some councils who had treated war pensioners fairly but have now changed their minds. One of them is North Tyneside. Until this year it ignored all the war pensions paid to veterans and their widows. Since April it has counted them as income. As a result it has 'saved' £504,000. But that saving has been paid directly by 623 local war veterans and widows. That is an average of more than £800 each but some will have lost a lot more. Tim Archer, press spokesman for the council, told Saga Magazine
"Councillors made the decision with a considerable amount of heartache. They are well aware that some people will be poorer in a way we would not wish. But we had to find about £6 million due to Government cuts. £504,000 is the cost of a primary school. Should we have closed one of those instead?"
North Tyneside, like 21 of the bottom 30, is a Labour council. A spokesman at Party headquarters was embarrassed but blamed the Government. "Labour face some of the most difficult financial positions because our councils are in the most deprived areas. It is a cop out on the Government's part. It should legislate to say war pensions are counted or ignored. Not give councils the discretion and then squeeze them financially. Obviously we would like war pensions to be ignored."
Several councils, including Derby and Wakefield have followed North Tyneside's bad example. But others have moved the other way. Mid Devon, a Liberal Democrat stronghold, used to take away as much of the are pension as it could until April this year. But adverse publicity and some spare cash enabled them to move straight to the list of the good. Other councils such as West Somerset and Wyre have done the same and more are set to join them in April next year.
Politics
But some Labour councils do not just blame finances. They tax war pensions as a matter of principle. Councils around mining - or ex-mining - areas tend to justify their position very differently. Barnsley in South Yorkshire has always taken as much from war pensions to pay for housing benefit as the law allows. Councillor Bernard Goddard, Chairman of the Finance Committee, who has found the money this year for a rise in councillors' allowances, explained why.
"Before we can give assistance we have to take into account every penny they possess. This includes the full amount of industrial disablement pensions paid to many of the 25,000 local men who made their contribution to the war effort down the mines. The full cost of extra assistance for war pensioners would have to come directly out of the pockets of ordinary council tax payers."
In other words until the miners get their industrial disablement benefit ignored, war pensioners will not get any help from Barnsley.
Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes has already presented one Bill to Parliament to make all councils in Britain ignore war pensions as they do by law in Northern Ireland. And that would include the three Liberal Democrat councils currently in the bottom thirty. Another is expected in the new session. The Royal British Legion and other ex-service organisations hope to make it the major issue for 1996, threatening to march and protest in a way they have not done before.
There is also something everyone can do. There will be local Government elections in May. Saga readers can make it an issue with their council candidates. And local government reorganisation means that a lot of councils have to reconsider their policies and may be ripe for letters from angry constituents. It's not just the thirty worst councils and the 80 others who need to be lobbied. Remember that the good councils can and do change back. And the more the Government squeezes their money the more likely they are to crack. Writing and voting are the weapons of democracy. Use them.
"They'll not get me down. When I was in Changi jail I said that if ever I got out no bugger'll kick me again. I‘ll go to jail, but they won‘t get their money and by God I‘ll disgrace them. I'll go to jail, That's not bravado, that's just how it is."
Eunice interrupts, remembering the time when she worked in the Air Ministry and was told Ted was missing and the long wait to find out he had survived.
"I would go to jail with him. We've been together 56 years. He was given that pension tax-free for life. Yes, I'll go to jail."
And they would. And come out with their heads high.
A master of local publicity he makes sure that the local voters know exactly what their council does to war pensioners. And that includes his own council, Rotherham, which he describes as one of the hard core councils. Ron started down the pits when he was 14 and returned to a surface job after his war-time injury but he blames the influence of ex-miners on the local policy.
"Sir Jack Layden [leader of Rotherham council] told me himself that if miners don‘t get their industrial pensions ignored then war pensioners won‘t. If I lived half a mile away in Doncaster I would get my council tax paid in full. As it is I pay every penny myself, about £400 a year."
And he is sure that his long nights until 2 or 3 am working at his computer are paying off as some councils do change their policy to help war pensioners.
"I think it's the pressure, it's shaming some of them, which of course it should do."
Ted Maddison admires the work Ron does but despairs about it working in Barnsley.
"You can't shame them. They have no shame. They don't know what shame is."
November/December 1995
e-mail Paul Lewis on paul@deadline.demon.co.uk