Some married women left to languish on tiny sums could be owed more than £50,000, says former pension minister Steve Webb
Thousands of married women receiving only £1-a-week in their state pension could be owed a “small fortune” by the Government, a leading pension expert has said.
According to former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb, up to 18,000 women may be entitled to tens of thousands of pounds each.
He said a “shocking” oversight by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had left some older women to languish on tiny sums in retirement.
Webb, now a partner at financial services firm Lane Clarke & Peacock (LCP), has helped affected women claim a long overdue, up-to-date pension.
Those affected have also received backdated payments from the DWP – with some women entitled to more than £50,000.
“It can be worth tens of thousands of pounds,” said Webb. “To anyone who is eligible, it’s a King’s ransom – a small fortune.”
The DWP announced last month that it had resolved around 130,000 state pension underpayments costing more than £800m since Webb and others began discovering major errors in 2020.
Webb wants the Government to do more to resolve the situation faced by a group of older, married women still receiving tiny weekly sums through the “graduated retirement benefit” (GRB) – typically worth around £1 a week.
This little-known group – many of whom may have stayed at home and did not build up National Insurance (NI) contributions – have been receiving the paltry sums under old pension arrangements which ran until 1975.
Webb’s analysis of DWP statistics shows there are still 18,520 women on GRB. The average amount they are receiving is currently 93p a week.
While not all of them are necessarily eligible for an up-to-date pension, those who have a husband with a UK state pension should be entitled to a married women’s pension.
It is worth 60 per cent of their husband’s pension, around £105 a week, if their husband is getting £176 a week from the basic state pension.
These women could also be in line for a windfall lump sum from the Government.
“Because it’s your first claim to a basic state pension, it can be backdated to when your husband retired,” said Webb. “It’s life-changing amounts of money.”
“What’s shocking is that some people are receiving derisory amounts [on GRB],” the pension expert said on the struggles faced by some women.
“It some cases the sum is so small, they were only paid once a year. Some couples have been getting by essentially on only one pension to support two people.”
Several cases have been previously highlighted by The i Paper, including Carole Davies, from Surrey, who discovered in 2021 that she was owed £56,000 by the Government.
She had been getting only £1 a week from GRB. But with Webb’s help, she began receiving a married woman’s state pension and a huge lump sum backdated to her husband’s retirement in 2005.
Bernie Weallans, from Brighton, got £20,000 in 2021 after getting in touch with Webb, around five years’ worth of repayments.
Webb said the complexity of changing pension rules over the decades meant it was not clear how many of the 18,520 women on GRB would be entitled to repayments.
Many now reside overseas, with only 3,296 of them living in the UK. Webb said women would be eligible wherever they lived in the world – so long as their husband has a UK state pension.
But the pension expert said those who have moved abroad were more likely to have married non-British citizens.
Webb called on the DWP to reach out to all those on GRB to check with them whether they are entitled to a married women’s pension.
“It’s a sufficiently small group, and the amounts they are missing out on are so huge, that I don’t think it’s outrageous to suggest the Government writes to them all and explains what they might be eligible for.”
Rachel Vahey, head of public policy at investment company AJ Bell, also urged the Government to be proactive about contacting women who could be owed thousands of pounds.
“Work like Sir Steve is doing on certain groups is really essential. Hopefully, the DWP can work with new information coming from the pension industry to identify remaining people. We need to make sure people get the money they are due.”
A DWP spokesperson said individual circumstances “mean not everyone will be entitled to receive a state pension or an increase in their state pension”.
They added: “People who are married or in a civil partnership who reached state pension age before 6 April 2016 may be entitled to receive a state pension or an increase in their state pension based on their partner’s National Insurance contributions once their partner has reached state pension age.”
