09 October 2007
A Liberal Democrat MP has urged older women to fill gaps in
their NI contributions in order to receive extra state pension.
Liberal Democrat MP Steve Webb recently appeared on the BBC's
Moneybox program and also issued a statement. According to
information he obtained around 470,000 women in their 60s who had
not paid enough National Insurance (NI) contributions to get a
state pension could pay one or more years' back-contributions in
order to now qualify for a pension.
Under a DWP scheme in 2004 women hadn't paid NI contributions
after 1996-97 could top up any years required to meet the minimum
state pension threshold. This was typically at a cost of around
£400 a year. This would entitle them to a 25% pension
equating to around £1,000 a year which can be backdated, in
some circumstances, to the retirement age of 60. However, the
letters sent to these women by the Government in 2004 were so
complicated that just 70,000 of the 470,000 women who received
details of the "buy back" scheme made extra payments. Mr Webb
commented: "Thousands of women are within a whisker of having a
pension in their own right but are getting nothing for the money
that they did put in. As a matter of urgency the Government must
identify these women and alert them in plain English to the pension
that they could be receiving."
