More than 1,400 British military veterans have been told to repay tens of thousands of pounds after the Ministry of Defence admitted to errors in their pension calculations. The blunder means veterans who had been receiving incorrect, often overpaid, sums for years are now facing demands to hand back significant amounts of money, causing distress and financial hardship for those affected, many of whom had planned their finances around the payments they believed were correct.

The MoD has acknowledged the miscalculations occurred within its pensions administration, though the precise cause of the widespread error has not been fully detailed. Affected veterans, some of whom face bills reaching into the tens of thousands of pounds, are said to include former service personnel who had no reason to suspect their pension payments were wrong. Campaigners and veterans' groups are expected to press the MoD for a fairer resolution, given the scale of the repayments demanded and the impact on those who served.