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Gurkhas win discrimination case & Lord Irvine's new pension

Officials Buried Veteran's Files
By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 13/12/2002) Published by the Telegraph

An inquiry into why thousands of disabled forces' veterans were charged tax they should never have paid has uncovered a catalogue of "systematic failings" and a culture in which civil servants did not care if veterans were properly treated.

The investigation was ordered by Lewis Moonie, the veterans minister, after he found that officials had misled him over the seriousness of the problem. It is scathing of the way pensions were administered.

At one point in the 1950s, civil servants handling Navy pensions deducted tax they knew should never be paid simply because they disagreed with the law, the inquiry found.

"The Admiralty for a time deliberately did not draw the attention of ratings to the tax exemption because efforts were being made to abolish it," the report said.

But it was most critical of civil servants administering Army pensions during the 1990s among whom there was a "deep rooted" culture in which it was thought not to matter if veterans were robbed of their entitlements.

Faced with a backlog of cases, civil servants filed thousands away without processing them, the inquiry said. This not only left more than 350 disabled soldiers paying tax they should not have paid but resulted in them not receiving their proper pensions.

"There was both a failure on the part of the management to recognise that cases were being filed away when actions remained outstanding and, more fundamentally, to create an ethos in which staff were sufficiently customer-orientated that it would be unthinkable to allow such a thing to happen."

The inquiry also confirmed that the problem was far deeper than thought, going back to 1919 and affecting all three Services. It was "impossible to say how many errors had been made".

The inquiry was ordered after The Telegraph disclosed in January that thousands of disabled servicemen and women whose pensions should have been tax-exempt had paid millions of pounds.

Tony Blair apologised publicly but Dr Moonie resisted an inquiry, telling MPs that the problem had affected only the Army, went back no further than 1952 and would cost only £6 million to put right.

But as it emerged that the error went back to 1919 and that veterans had been wrongly charged £30 million, involving the Navy and the RAF as well, Dr Moonie agreed to an internal inquiry.

This quickly discovered that even after the problem was realised civil servants did not react properly to inquiries from veterans and relatives.

Replies sent out by the Armed Forces Pensions Administration Agency in Glasgow blamed the media and told some pensioners they were not involved when they were.

"Many of the letters have left much to be desired in terms of tone as well as substance," the inquiry found, adding that inaccurate advice was also given to ministers and as a result to Parliament.

The report found that the compensation was inadequate and that efforts to rectify this were being hampered by the Inland Revenue.    

At best the refund would leave many pensioners worse off than if they had put the money into a National Savings account, said the inquiry. At worst they had effectively given the Government an interest-free loan.

Gurkhas win discrimination case
The Guardian Weekly 5-12-2002
'Racist' MoD ordered to compensate Gurkha PoWs
Richard Norton-Taylor

A high court judge last week branded the Ministry of Defence (MoD) racist and irrational for excluding Gurkhas subjected to brutal treatment in Japanese prisoner of war camps from compensation payments.
In a judgment upholding the principle of equality, Mr Justice McCombe found in favour of three Gurkha war veterans who, with more than 300 of their former comrades, can now expect to receive £10,000 each - the sum given to British survivors of the second world war camps.

The Gurkhas had been treated differently to servicemen from other countries in the British empire because of their race, the judge said."Citizens of India and Pakistan who were members of the [British] Indian army were reasonably excluded from UK compensation arrangements of the 1950s because their new independent nations had made their own arrangements with Japan," he said.

He added: "The Gurkhas were excluded on the basis of a constitutional distinction and which was in fact founded upon race."The MoD maintained that distinction in 2000 when Gurkhas were excluded from the £10,000-a-head compensation package. That decision, "particularly if the racial nature of the disciplinary distinction originally made in the 19th century was not appreciated . . . appears to me . . . to be irrational and inconsistent with the principle of equality that is the cornerstone of our law," the judge said.

The case was brought by Pahalman Gurung, Gaurisor Thapa, and Hukumsing Pun, who are in their 80s and live in Nepal. They argued that they were the victims of unequal treatment and racial discrimination by the British government. The three men were subjected to particularly harsh treatment after withstanding pressure to join the Indian National army, which collaborated with the Japanese.

Mr Gurung, president of the Gurkha Army Ex-Servicemen's Organisation, said last week: "I am delighted to have won. I was proud to remain loyal to my British oath in the second world war and as a consequence I took severe punishment from the Japanese." He added: "To be acknowledged for this at my age of 81 is very important to me."

Phil Shiner, of Birmingham-based Public Interest Lawyers, who acted for the former prisoners of war, said: "The Gurkhas have fought enough battles to prove their loyalty and dedication to Britain."  He said that the test case established an important principle of equality in common law, which would help others concerned with issues of racial, sexual and other discrimination. 

The MoD said last week that an appeal was being considered.

Lord Irvine's new pension
Tuesday December 31 2002