Speeches

Gavin Robinson – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gavin Robinson on 2015-11-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether his Department plans to provide a pension to part-time soldiers who served in the Ulster Defence Regiment.

Mark Lancaster

Full time members of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) had an automatic entitlement to become members of the Armed Forces Pension Scheme. Part-time members of the UDR were engaged under different terms to the full time regular members of the Regiment. These terms were similar to those of the Territorial Army and reflected that part-time engagements were often on an irregular, intermittent and short-term basis.Part-time membersof the UDR were not members of an Armed Forces Pension Scheme.

There are no plans to review the pension entitlement for former members of the Ulster Defence Regiment.