REGARDING your article on the pension consequences of equal pay settlements ("Pensions claim may see equal pay bill hit £1bn", The Herald, March 13), it is interesting to see the Scottish Government's Scottish Public Pensions Agency intervening to order a council to make its equal pay settlement pensionable.

This is the very agency whose Scottish Teachers' Superannuation Scheme operates an overtly gender discriminatory policy in relation to survivor benefits. These are benefits paid to the surviving spouse of a pension scheme member who has died. The pension scheme's explanation of how these benefits are calculated basically amounts to "If you are a married female teacher, all your service from April 1988 counts for the calculation of your spouse's survivor benefit. If you are a male teacher, all your service from April 1972 counts for the calculation of your spouse's survivor benefit."

Unsurprisingly, this differentiation, based purely on the gender of the pension scheme member and the survivor benefit recipient, results in male surviving partners losing out.

Perhaps we should be advocating equality for all.

Dr Ronal Brown,

1a Lyle Road, Greenock.