The Select Committee on Pensions, appointed by the House of
Commons, has issued a special Report which goes to the root of the matter. It recommends that the disabled soldier shall have a statutory right to a pension, and that there should be an independent Appeal Tribunal to which he can apply if his statutory right is disregarded or minimized at the whim of some Departmental clerk. The Committee proposes also that the pension rates should be raised to meet the cost of living, so that a bachelor who is wholly disabled as the result of his service may receive forty shillings a week, while a married man would receive fifty shillings, with an allowance for each child. The total cost of the additional pensions which the Committee would grant is estimated at £18,000,000. For our part, we should say that the statutory right to a pension, with a right of appeal to an impartial Court, would be a far greater boon to the disabled soldier or the soldier's widow than an increase in the pension rate. The administration of the Pensions Ministry will never be satisfactory until the responsible officials are made to feel that negligence or procrastination will expose them to a public rebuke from an independent Tribunal, enforcing a pensioner's statutory right.
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