news story

12th May 2007

West MP Exposes Pensions Scandal - and Wants to Hear From Pensioners

Click here to download information sheet to see if you might be affected

If you think you might be affected, click here to email Steve Webb

Northavon MP Steve Webb has uncovered a scandal which could be costing thousands of pensioners millions of pounds in underpaid state pensions.

The MP has worked with the Times newspaper and accountants Grant Thornton to identify a problem in the pension system for women which could be shortchanging many women now in their 60s and 70s.

The MP now wants to hear from women who think they may have been affected so that he can take cases up with the Department for Work and Pensions. He has a meeting on Tuesday (May 15th) with pensions minister James Purnell where he will be setting out his concerns.

The women who are most likely to have been affected are married women now in their 60s or early 70s, who took time off work during the 1980s to bring up children and who are drawing a reduced state pension because of an incomplete record of National Insurance Contributions. Many of these women should have had their pension rights protected during the period when they were bringing up children under a system known as 'Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP)'. But evidence has emerged of women who are not being told about HRP and whose pension has mistakenly been calculated without the benefit of HRP. In one case a woman found her pension entitlement was nearly doubled when the correction was made.

Steve Webb said:

"Many women get very poor state pensions, partly because of time they spent out of paid work bringing up children. From the late 1970s a system known as 'Home Responsibilities Protection' was introduced to help such women build up bigger pension rights, but there is evidence that not all women are being given what they are entitled to.

"I believe that there are thousands of mothers who are now in their 60s or 70s who are entitled to a bigger state pension than the one they are being paid. I would like to hear from any woman who is now drawing a reduced state pension, who took time off work to bring up children during the 1980s or 1990s, and whose pension documentation makes no mention of Home Responsibilities Protection".

 

Read this story in the Times newspaper

Listen to Steve Webb's interview on BBC Radio 4's Money Box