Michael Heath: They are simply hiding behind anonymity, and there are three departments and everyone says “It’s another department”
A pensioner has accused the Government of ‘hiding behind anonymity’ and ‘buckpassing’ after spending half a year chasing officials to fix a state pension shortfall.
Michael Heath, pictured right, from Northern Ireland, says his efforts to get a lost year onto his record went nowhere both before and after he started drawing his pension at age 66 in April.
Within the month before his birthday, he received a letter saying he could pay £795.60 for a top-up to fill the missing year, but his response protesting that he was already owed it went unanswered too.
The manufacturing business manager from County Down is among up to ten million people who claimed Universal Credit for some period over the past six years, and could have errors in state pension records due to a secret computer failure exposed by This is Money.
That includes up to 137,000 people already drawing a pension, although the exact total is unknown and those potentially being underpaid have not been informed by the Department for Work and Pensions.
The full scale of the fiasco was recently laid bare by the National Audit Office, which scrutinises Government spending, in the DWP’s recently published annual report.
It said the computer problem was fixed in February – the same month our probe exclusively revealed the state pension cover-up – and the DWP and HMRC are now correcting records in a process expected to last until the end of March 2024.
As a stopgap, which we first learned about from This is Money readers, corrections are also made to people’s records when they are within a few months of reaching state pension age.
However, like Mr Heath they can fall through the net and end up underpaid as a result, or waste money buying top-ups they didn’t need – a trap he might have fallen into if not alert to it.
The Government has told us any top-ups bought in this scenario will be refunded.
Meanwhile, Mr Heath has echoed the complaints of many other readers about being stonewalled by staff in three separate Government departments, who all refused to help them when they tried to get state pension errors sorted out.
The Government has repeatedly assured us that there is nothing to worry about because these cases are being picked up manually. But Mr Heath’s case shows that people are being missed
Steve Webb, former Pensions Minister
He contacted us to say he had spent months contacting the DWP, HMRC and his local Universal Credit office to no avail.
‘I could not pay for a missing year as I felt I would lose the money when the error was corrected,’ he said.
‘I put the problem to my MLA [Member of the Legislative Assembly] Northern Ireland Assembly Michael Nesbitt. His request produced similar buck passing and no response from Universal Credit.
He added: ‘My issue is they refuse to respond to every contact. They won’t say anything. They know there is a problem.
‘These Government departments are undermining our democracy because they are refusing to deal with the problem they have created.
‘They are simply hiding behind anonymity, and there are three departments and everyone says “It’s another department”.’
After This is Money flagged his case to the DWP and HMRC, Mr Heath’s National Insurance record was updated with missing credits. With the extra year that he needed, he now expects to get a full state pension of £203.85 a week and arrears of around £25.
In Northern Ireland, state pensions are dealt with by the Department for Communities, and a spokesman told us: ‘The Department is aware of the case and is working at pace to address the points raised.
‘The Department will update the customer as soon as clarification is secured and will offer additional support to ensure the matter is resolved.’
The DWP is understood to be working with HMRC to provide the right information for UC claimants and support for frontline staff dealing with their enquiries.
HMRC is advising people to wait until NI credits acquired from claiming Universal Credit are showing on their record before making any voluntary payments needed to make up a qualifying year. If any payments are made unnecessarily, they can be refunded.
Steve Webb, a former Pensions Minister and now This is Money’s pensions columnist, says: ‘We know that well over 100,000 people over pension age have potentially had gaps in their National Insurance record for a period when they were receiving Universal Credit.
‘The Government has repeatedly assured us that there is nothing to worry about because these cases are being picked up manually. But Mr Heath’s case shows that people are being missed.’
Mr Webb, who is partner at pension consultant LCP, added: ‘ We need urgent assurances that any underpaid state pensions will be corrected as soon as possible and that no-one who has wasted money on voluntary NI contributions in this situation will lose out.’
