Pensions Minister Sir Steve Webb says the errors relate to missing ‘Home Responsibilities Protection’ (HRP) or National Insurance credits for time at home with children.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) statistics and research published shows that efforts to fix state pension underpayments have so far failed. Former Liberal Democrats Pensions Minister Sir Steve Webb says the errors relate to missing ‘Home Responsibilities Protection’ (HRP) or National Insurance credits for time at home with children.
The DWP set aside £1.1 billion for payment of arrears to women affected and estimated that around 194,000 people could see corrections.
But the latest report on their large scale correction exercise in partnership with HMRC reveals that to date only 12,379 cases with arrears have been identified, resulting in payments of £104m – only about a tenth of the original estimate.
READ MORE UK faces 27C heatwave next week with 33 counties in England set to sizzle
The study found recipients said that they thought the letters might be scams, and so did not respond; people also reported being anxious about engaging with government.
Steve Webb, partner at pension consultants LCP, who first raised concerns around missing HRP more than 15 years ago, said: “It is deeply disappointing that efforts to track down mothers being underpaid their state pension have so far failed to reach the vast majority of those who the Government thinks have lost out.”
The HRP scheme ran from 1986 to 2010, before being replaced by National Insurance credits. It was designed to protect people’s National Insurance contributions towards their state pension when they were out of work due to caring responsibilities.
Previous Government estimates suggest the average underpayment is around £7,800 per person. The pensions expert warned: “Writing letters to elderly people which guide them towards a two-stage online process was always going to have a low success rate.
“People are understandably wary of scams, and expecting them to do their own online eligibility check before submitting an online claim was bound to put many people off.
“Whilst DWP deserve credit for conducting research into the reasons for the failure of the strategy so far, it is vital that efforts are now redoubled to make sure that far more people get the state pension that should have been theirs by right”.
