{"longTitle":"A Bill to provide for the equal treatment of Forces widows' pensions in respect of retirement from military service for the periods before 1973 and between 1973 and 2005; and for connected purposes","summary":"<p>Until 1973, the widow of a retired serviceman was entitled to a pension equal to one third of the pension their spouse had earned.</p><p>In 1973, a number of improvements to the Armed Forces Pension Scheme were introduced, one of which was to increase the service widow&rsquo;s pensions to half the spouse&rsquo;s rate of pension. However, this improvement applied only to that part of the spouse&rsquo;s pension earned by service on or after 31 March 1973.<br><br><strong>Key areas<br></strong></p><ul><li>The Bill would provide for armed forces pensions to be paid to surviving spouses and civil partners of deceased armed forces personnel who retired from service:</li></ul><p>    (a) before 31 March 1973 and<br>    (b) between 31 March 1973 and 6 April 2005<br>    to be calculated and paid on the same basis.</p>","sponsors":[{"member":{"memberId":49,"name":"Mr Michael Mates","party":"Conservative","partyColour":"0063ba","house":"Commons","memberPhoto":"https://members-api.parliament.uk/api/Members/49/Thumbnail","memberPage":"https://members.parliament.uk/member/49/contact","memberFrom":"East Hampshire"},"organisation":null,"sortOrder":1}],"promoters":[],"petitioningPeriod":null,"petitionInformation":null,"agent":null,"billId":235,"shortTitle":"Forces Widows' Pensions (Equality of Treatment) Bill","formerShortTitle":null,"currentHouse":"Commons","originatingHouse":"Commons","lastUpdate":"2008-10-30T19:01:00","billWithdrawn":null,"isDefeated":false,"billTypeId":7,"introducedSessionId":21,"includedSessionIds":[21],"isAct":false,"currentStage":{"id":1178,"stageId":7,"sessionId":21,"description":"2nd reading","abbreviation":"2R","house":"Commons","stageSittings":[{"id":1075,"stageId":7,"billStageId":1178,"billId":235,"date":"2008-02-01T00:00:00"}],"sortOrder":2}}