BLESMA Champions the Interests of its Members

The War Pension

BLESMA has huge experience and knowledge of the War Disablement Pension. Most Members are War Pensioners

Armed Forces Compensation Scheme

BLESMA has detailed knowledge and much recent hands on experience of the new Armed Forces Compensation Scheme

Provision of Artificial Limbs

BLESMA has detailed knowledge of prosthetic limbs and their provision

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The War Pension

• It started at the end of the First World War. Always paid from discharge to those injured in service of their country.
• The first BLESMA campaign, largely behind closed doors was in the Second World War when it was discovered that those injured at Dunkirk and Alamein were awarded War Pensions at lower rates than those injured in the First World War. A successful campaign was fought.
• Improvements to the War Pension and associated allowances for support and care were sought and fought for throughout the post war years.
• War Pension mobility provision evolved into the Motability scheme of today.
• The War Pension will be in payment for at least another 50 years and benefits BLESMA Members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan before April 2005.  The War Pension is under scrutiny by the MoD – BLESMA is therefore ‘on watch’ as a number of issues are emerging!

The Armed Forces Compensation Scheme

After hard fought negotiations with MoD through the early ‘Noughties’ the replacement scheme for those injured in or as a result of service started in April 2005 – with good and bad points!

Good Points

• Awarded in service
• Significant lump sums for the more disabling injuries
• Guaranteed income payments, tax free index linked for life are made to the more severely injured.

Early Concerns

• Multiple injury rules were too constricting.  BLESMA was party to improvements so that in the case of serious disability, where it could be fairly assured, that all other injuries would contribute to the disability injury all would be included at the maximum rate possible.
• BLESMA has always been concerned about long term deterioration for amputees – something effectively recognised in the old War Pension Scheme.  BLESMA’s experience suggests that such deteriorating is more likely 30 or 40 years after injury.  MoD limits AFCS to no exception deterioration after 10 years. We do not think this restriction is ‘evidence based’.  
• Time limits – there are a number of other imposed time limits which we think are absolutely unnecessary and demeaning to those who have put life and limb on the line.

Growing Concerns

• BLESMA validates all awards received by its Members and evidence suggests that the process, designed to be suitable for lay decision making is often ineffective.  BLESMA has backed/fought for ‘reconsideration’ with significant success.  This suggests the process is itself unreliable.
• Injuries can affect the main disability in such a way that the impact of the secondary injury can be far more serious that if suffered on its own.  This ‘consequence effect’ can have a very serious impact.  A leg that has significant permanent malfunction between thigh and knee is assessed as a level 8 tariff.  Its affect on the other amputated leg is added up in a way that the sum of two injuries is a disabled life confined to a wheelchair.  This consequence is not recognised by a tariff based system.

The Big Question

It would help if we all knew what this compensation was for! Is it for life long maintenance or is it – as the War Pension was – for pain and suffering?

• If it is for maintenance, as much civil compensation is?  If so the sums awarded are inadequate.
  
• If it is indeed for pain and suffering then the individual compensated should rightly keep the award for his or her own use – to enjoy – not to spend on his or her own care.

Then who should pay? We the Country, Local Services, National Services, the Voluntary Sector. We owe it to them. Is compensation for injury or the lifelong consequences of that injury – in other words disability? BLESMA believes for the severely injured it is for the disability

The  Quinquennial Review

• AFCS came in five years ago next April
• The MoD will review its effectiveness
• We believe there is much cause for concern
• We therefore believe that the best solution should be an enquiry that is largely independent of those that set the scheme up.
• While we believe there is much right with the scheme an independent judgement can give us all confidence

Provision of Artificial Limbs

• DRMC Headley Court has been in the prosthetic business for just a few years.  BLESMA, having long suggested the possibility is delighted by the outcome.
• Headley Court provides an outstanding prosthetic service and the serving injured are the envy of the amputee community.
• The rest of the Country’s amputees have to rely on prosthetic provision delivered through local Primary Care Trusts.  Some devote more money to their amputees than do others.  Therefore it is a postcode lottery.
• For all other War Pension amputees there is therefore a problem.  They have to accept what local decision makers decide, yet they did not lose their limbs for this area or that, for London or Norwich or Newcastle.  They lost their limbs for the whole country.  They should be treated equally.
• But how ironic this all is!  How is it that such discrepancy in provision can exist at all in a First World Country like ours?  How ironic it is that the Ministry of Defence provides better prosthetic care and provision than the Department of Health, such that it demonstrates the art of the ‘prosthetically possible’.
• It is time to grip the nation’s limb sense, to get full transparency on what the provision is across the country, to once and for all lay down nationwide standards for all – in sum to put the word National back into the NHS.  BLESMA and other interested parties are on this case.