LCP partner, Steve Webb, has written to Pensions Minister, Guy Opperman, to raise concerns about “continued errors” in the calculation of state pension entitlements.

Webb noted that, despite the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) correction exercise that is ongoing on historic state pension awards, errors were still being made on new state pension awards.

In his letter, Webb said that he had continued to hear from women who had been wrongly told they had a reduced or no pension entitlement and included four examples of women who had been in touch with him, including one who retired in April 2022.

The “key area of error” relates to women who previously paid a reduced rate of National Insurance contributions, commonly referred to as the ‘married woman’s stamp’.

Although these women may find that under the rules of the new state pension they lack the 10 years of full-rate contributions needed to qualify for any state pension, the new system has a concession for them as long as they were paying the reduced stamp 35 years before they retired.

Affected women can automatically get a pension of £85 a week if they are married or £141.85 if they are widowed or divorced.

“What is particularly worrying about these errors is that DWP apparently already knew that there was a potential problem and thought they had fixed it,” he wrote.

“I appreciate that the group of women affected by this concession is a relatively small one, and that I have only supplied you with four cases of error – although all of these were potentially life-changing for the women concerned.

“But I remain concerned that even the chastening experience of discovering a £1bn underpayment in state pensions does not seem to have prompted a fundamental change in the department’s approach to checking state pension awards.”

He asked Opperman to respond on two points: “When a similar error was detected in 2019, how many women were affected and how much was paid out to them in lump sums for underpaid pension?”, and: “Will you now review all ‘zero’ awards and other low awards to check for errors on this specific point?”

Webb commented: “When DWP admitted to me that they had been making errors for this group of women I assumed that they would have put in place procedures to sort out the problem.

“Yet I continue to hear from women who have been wrongly told that they are not entitled to a pension.

“What concerns me most is how many other women there may be who simply trusted what DWP have told them and are now struggling to get by without the pension which is rightfully theirs.

“DWP should be checking all their records for such cases and putting things right, as well as making sure that these mistakes cannot happen again.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “This year we will spend over £110bn on the state pension and our priority is ensuring every pensioner receives all the financial support to which they are entitled. Where errors do occur, we are committed to identifying and rectifying them.

“We will respond to the letter in due course.”

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