Shocking cases of women wrongly refused a state pension at 66 exposed

Refused a state pension: We have uncovered Government errors which have led to women being wrongly turned down at age 66

Shocking government failures have led to some women who worked all their lives being wrongly refused a state pension, and their protests not addressed, a This is Money investigation has unearthed. 

Today, we reveal a string of serious blunders which have prompted renewed calls for a full investigation of previous ‘zero’ or suspiciously low awards to women turning 66.

The Department for Work and Pensions says where errors occur it is committed to fixing them, but it has denied a review of all recent state pension rejections is now under way.

Lesley Martin, who started her first job aged 16 and still works part-time 50 years on, spent six months making dozens of futile calls trying to find out why she was refused a pension.

She says: ‘I was absolutely floored. It was awful. I paid taxes all my life. I didn’t claim any other benefits.’

She had paid the married women’s stamp and was therefore due £85 a week once her husband reached state pension age shortly after her. 

When This is Money’s columnist and former Pensions Minister Steve Webb took up her cause, the legal secretary from Aberdeen was awarded her pension and £600 in arrears.

‘The more who know about this shambles the better,’ she told us.

This and further fresh cases of women wrongly refused a state pension have come to light in an ongoing investigation by Webb and This is Money – find full details below.

The five women whose stories we highlight each stood to lose tens of thousands of pounds over the course of a typical retirement, and some were also awarded hefty arrears.

We previously discovered many elderly women were underpaid a total of around £1.5billion in a state pension scandal affecting those who reached state pension before 2016.

However, now women qualifying for their pension since 2016 have suffered from different errors at the hands of the Government.

Those who paid ‘married women’s stamp’ for at least one year during the 35 years before they reached state pension age should receive around £4,400 a year if they are married, or around £7,400 a year if they are divorced or widowed.

An estimated 10,000 women are eligible, but it is not known how many have missed out.

Webb recently flagged this issue after uncovering four cases, including a retired pub worker who was wrongly refused a state pension when she turned 66 in April.

Meanwhile, HMRC has omitted ‘home responsibilities protection’ for bringing up children from an unknown number of National Insurance records. The DWP recently said HRP inaccuracies were the second largest reason for state pension underpayments.

The latter error was involved in a recent tragic case where a retired shop assistant was wrongly denied a state pension for two years and died before this could be corrected, although the DWP eventually handed £12,500 to her bereaved husband.

Women who applied to the DWP for their state pension and were wrongly rejected outright or given a low-ball award tell us they were never alerted to either potential problem, or advised how to check their HRP record with the taxman.

Were YOU wrongly refused a state pension? Read more about the married women’s stamp and home responsibilities protection below – and find out what to do next

Steve Webb:  ‘I have now reached the stage where I start from the assumption that a low or zero state pension award is incorrect’

Steve Webb, a partner at pension consultant LCP, says: ‘I have now reached the stage where I start from the assumption that a low or zero state pension award is incorrect.

‘Time and again, married women are wrongly told that there is no point claiming because they are not entitled or that they are only entitled to a pittance when the truth is that they are entitled to thousands of pounds a year when their pension is calculated properly.

‘What is also shocking is that these are not simply historical errors from a bygone era but are new mistakes being made today.

‘The Government’s complacency about this catalogue of errors is genuinely shocking and a full investigation is needed.’

Webb submitted a freedom of information request about married women’s stamp mistakes he had discovered, and the DWP responded: ‘After a thorough investigation, based on the evidence available, these are isolated cases and do not indicate widespread error.

‘However, the Department has taken additional steps. Additional checks have been introduced to prevent further errors, as well as improved processes to detect any error.’

The DWP added that this involved daily scans of IT systems of disallowed claims before decisions are issued on ‘nil’ cases, while low awards would be picked up by independent checking routes. And it has set up other controls against error, such as alerts to review a woman’s case again later if she retires before her partner.

Webb says it appears from this that the DWP is not going back to check past cases, simply doing more thorough checks going forward before they tell a woman she is not entitled to any state pension.

He dubs this ‘totally unacceptable’, saying: ‘I am still hearing from women refused a state pension in recent years who should clearly have received one, and these cases won’t be picked up by checking future activity only.’

DWP urged to carry out full probe and provide proper training to staff

‘It is alarming that this Conservative Government continues to fail pensioners by making errors in calculating their entitlements and then refusing to fix them once they’ve been identified,’ says Matt Rodda MP, Labour’s Shadow Pensions Minister. 

‘Paying the state pension correctly is a basic requirement of a modern Government, and yet ministers continue to let pensioners down. 

‘We are living through a cost-of-living crisis and making people’s lives unnecessarily harder through no fault of their own is shameful. The Government must take immediate action to fix this problem.’

Former Pensions Minister and campaigner Ros Altmann says: ‘It seems that DWP is quite overwhelmed with trying to sort out the mess that has built up over many years, resulting from the horrendous complexity and constant changes in state pension rules which date back several decades. 

‘It is worrying that only those who are told they are entitled to no pension at all are being looked into, while those with suspiciously low amounts are being left to other routes. 

Wendy Chamberlain MP: ‘It is preposterous to find that DWP staff aren’t trained to know about something so basic as the married woman’s stamp’

‘The problem is that this is all so very time consuming and staff intensive and is happening at a time when the Department was already engaged in trying to sort out other historical errors that came to light many years after they should have done. 

‘The women affected could each be struggling unnecessarily and, especially as the cost of living has been soaring, they may well be plunged into or further into poverty as a result.

‘Obviously, the sooner the errors are corrected the better, but it is difficult to be confident that this will be remedied rapidly.’ 

Wendy Chamberlain MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Work and Pensions, says: ‘The number of women coming forward show that this is a systemic problem not a few isolated cases as the Government suggests.

‘It is never acceptable – but particularly in this cost of living crisis – to leave pensioners without the payments they’re entitled to.

‘DWP must immediately carry out a full investigation to find and correct errors, and provide proper training to staff to support women who ask for assistance.

‘It is preposterous to find that DWP staff aren’t trained to know about something so basic as the married woman’s stamp.’

What does the Government say?

‘This year we will spend over £110billion on the state pension and support over 12.5million pensioners,’ says a Government spokesperson.

‘Our priority is ensuring everyone receives the financial support to which they are entitled and, where errors do occur, we are committed to fixing them.’

An HMRC spokesperson says: ‘We are investigating an issue with the historical recording of Home Responsibilities Protection in a small number of National Insurance records, with work under way to identify those affected.’

‘No one seemed to know anything’: Calls to DWP challenging pension rejection got nowhere

Lesley Martin was shocked to receive a letter in January when she turned 66 saying she did not qualify for a state pension.

She had paid the married women’s stamp during a working life spanning 50 years, and was therefore due an £85 a week pension once her husband reached state pension age too in May.

The legal secretary from Aberdeen says she made dozens of calls to the DWP to challenge her zero award, and on some occasions was passed to HMRC and spoke to staff there as well – on three occasions she was promised a call back within 48 hours, but no one rang her.

She finds it ‘bizarre’ that no Government staff seemed to know about married women’s stamp or was able to help her during her many calls, both before and after her husband turned 66, adding: ‘I spoke to so many people and no one seemed to know anything.’

Her efforts got nowhere until she contacted Steve Webb, whose intervention prompted the DWP to start paying her a pension and arrears of just over £600 this summer.

Mrs Martin told This is Money: ‘I was so grateful to him. They should have told me the first time I rang, when your husband reaches state pension age you will get something.’

She says of the six months she spent unsuccessfully trying to resolve this with the DWP by herself: ‘It was awful. I was getting a bit desperate.’

‘I have been paying NI all these years’: NHS worker receives £8,600 backpayment

Margaret Hall has worked since she was 15:  ‘They told me I wasn’t entitled to anything’

Margaret Hall, pictured right, was refused a state pension at all for two years after she turned 66 in 2017.

This had been amended already to  around £62 a week by the time she contacted This is Money this summer, but following our intervention her pension was raised to £99 a week and she got a £8,600 backpayment.

Mrs Hall has worked since she was 15 with hardly a break, except six-week stints on maternity leave and a two-year period of retirement after which she has returned to work in the NHS.

The hospital administrator from London says she had  ‘much correspondence’ with the DWP and called many times over her pension.

‘They told me I wasn’t entitled to anything, but I have been paying National Insurance all these years,’ she told us.

Mrs Hall had paid the married women’s stamp for many years, including after her divorce at which point she should have moved to paying the full NI rate.

She has since remarried, but because her present husband has not yet reached state pension age she does not qualify on that count, and it was her own NI record that needed to be sorted out with HMRC.

She told This is Money: ‘Thanks so much for all your help and assistance – it is much appreciated. I am in any event very grateful for HMRC looking into my pension situation and having received the refund and increase in pension payable to me.’

An HMRC spokesperson said: ‘We were happy to help Mrs Hall amend her National Insurance record, which has resulted in her receiving an increased state pension.

‘Customers who are no longer eligible to pay National Insurance at the reduced rate should inform their employer or HMRC as soon as possible to ensure their NI record is kept up to date.’

‘It will make a massive difference’: Widow belatedly receives state pension

Sarah Marks started receiving a £185 a week state pension and got arrears of £7,450 after This is Money raised her case with the DWP.

Her son Wayne told us his mother was informed she was not entitled to any pension after she turned 66 in August last year. 

However, she thought it likely she paid the married women’s stamp during various jobs held during her working life.

‘My father unfortunately passed away in October last year, so she now has no pension income,’ Mr Marks wrote to us. ‘Is there anything I can do to check this for her please? Or is she entitled to anything now she is a widow?’

After we intervened, Mrs Marks, who lives in Cambridgeshire, was contacted by DWP staff about making a state pension application.

Her case highlights how women wrongly told they are not due any state pension can be deterred from making a claim at all.

If they are misinformed at the outset, they miss out unless they or the Government discover the error.

Mr Marks told us: ‘Thank you so much for your assistance and help with this. It will make a massive difference to my mum.’

‘I assumed I would receive a pension’: Blunder is belatedly overturned

The DWP incorrectly informed Gina Baker (not her real name) that she was not entitled to a state pension by letter towards the end of last year.

Mrs Baker, who turned 66 early this year, asked This is Money for help after reading our previous stories about women being wrongly refused a pension.

‘I have received a letter from DWP explaining that I am not entitled to any pension at all. I assumed I would receive a pension starting February 2022. I paid a married woman’s stamp,’ says the self-employed business consultant, who lives in Dorset.

After we raised her case with the DWP, it acknowledged she was due a state pension, and she is set to receive £85 a week and arrears once it has processed her claim.

‘Nobody seems to be able to help me’: State pension corrected to £96 a week

Christine Castle was wrongly told by the DWP she would receive a £75 a week state pension when she reached the age of 66 last month.

When we raised her case, the DWP found that she was instead owed £80 per week because a carer’s credit had been missed off her record.

However, Mrs Castle paid the married women’s stamp, and her state pension will be bumped up to £96 a week when her husband is 66 in September.

She also has the option of buying voluntary top-ups, which if she takes could push up her pension further to around £106 a week.

Mrs Castle, an administrator from Hertfordshire, says she struggled to get answers when she challenged her pension with the DWP, before This is Money and Steve Webb looked into her case.

‘I have been in contact with the DWP but nobody seems to be able to help me,’ she told us. ‘It has now been passed to the back office ‘to be looked at’.’

She noted that a staff member she spoke to was completely unaware of the state pension rate for those who paid the married women’s stamp.

‘The difficult thing is they give you a number to ring, and they can’t deal with it and they give another number. No one really knows. How can you help someone if you can’t see their details?’

Are YOU being underpaid state pension, or were you turned down? What should you do

Depending on your NI record and family history, you might have lost out because the married women’s stamp was not taken into account by the DWP, or home responsibilities protection was missed off your NI record by HMRC.

If you paid the married women’s reduced rate NI contributions (also known as the small stamp) during the same period that you claimed child benefit, HRP cannot be used to increase your pension.

The married women’s stamp

A little-known rule means women who paid the ‘married women’s stamp’ towards the state pension can still benefit from it now.

Women retiring from April 2016 onwards get state pension payments based on their own National Insurance record not their husband’s.

But there is a special concession for those who paid the stamp for at least one year during the 35 years before they reached state pension age.

You can claim £85.00 a week if still married or £141.85 if you are widowed or divorced, based on this year’s rates.

If you paid the stamp and think you qualify, contact the DWP or fill in a state pension pension claim form, even if you have previously been told you don’t qualify.

Home responsibilities protection

People who have reached state pension age and are not already receiving a full basic pension of £141.85 a week might be able to add further qualifying years to their National Insurance record by claiming HRP.

You can claim HRP by filling in the CF411 form here, but first check the following to see if it is worthwhile.

– Did you register for and receive child benefit between 06/04/1978 and 05/04/2010?

– Did your partner? It can be possible to swap when the ‘wrong’ parent claims child benefit.

– Does your NI record NOT contain HRP for the period above, even though you qualified for it and did not accrue contributions through another route – check what counts as eligibility for HRP here and your NI record here.

As noted above, if you paid the married women’s stamp during the same period you claimed child benefit, HRP cannot be used to increase your pension.

Also, if you paid standard rate NI contributions and earned enough for it to be counted as a full year for pension purposes while claiming child benefit, HRP will not increase your pension.

Contact details to query your NI record with HMRC are here.

Contacting This is Money

If you were refused a state pension or are receiving less than £141.85 per week and think there has been an error, you can also email This is Money at [email protected].

Please put DWP CLAIMS in the subject line and include:

– Your date of birth

– Your basic state pension figure, if any – this can be found on your annual statement

– Whether you earned HRP or paid married women’s stamp, and in which years as best as you can remember

– Your phone number – this will only be used to follow up this issue, not used for marketing purposes.

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk