A landmark military ruling has given widows of police officers killed in the line of duty fresh hope they’ll be able to keep their husband’s pension if they find new love.
Campaigners led by Christine Fulton, 54, want Home Secretary Theresa May to change the rules which consign bereaved police widows to a life of loneliness.
Under current rules they can lose their police widow’s pension if they marry again or cohabit.
But with Prime Minister David Cameron ordering the closure of a loophole which means thousands of war widows will be able to re-marry without losing their pensions, there is now hope the same rule could be extended to cop widows.
Christine, whose husband PC Lewis Fulton was murdered while on duty in Glasgow, said: “We are absolutely delighted for the armed forces but there is no reason now why the government can’t make this the case for police officers’ widows as well.”
Christine was left alone with her then seven-month-old son Luke after Lewis was stabbed to death by schizophrenic Philip McFadden in a frenzied knife attack in Glasgow’s Gorbals 20 years ago.
The campaigner, who heads the Care Of Police Survivors (COPS) charity, has since found new love with a retired police officer. But the couple have been unable to wed or even move in together, unless she forfeits her husband’s pension.
The UK Government went some way to correcting the anomaly after Christine, a mother-of-one from Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, launched her campaign in 2005.
However “lifetime pensions” were only for new recruits and did not apply to Christine and more than 130 other widows whose husbands had been killed protecting the public.
Teeside-born Christine, who was awarded the MBE for her tireless campaigning, said: “Lewis died protecting the public in this country, doing a dangerous job, why should police widows not have the same right as military widows?”
Mr Cameron announced yesterday that thousands of military widows will be able to remarry without losing their pensions from next year.
He said: “This is a long-standing grievance and I think one which is very justified.”
However, the Home Office has said that backdating police pensions would have “serious implications” across the public sector. The move would cost about £50million.
Brian Docherty, chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, called for “parity” in the government’s treatment of military and police widows.
He said he would be discussing Christine’s campaign at a meeting this week with Police Federation chiefs from England and Wales.
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