Most people need around a 35-year track record in National Insurance contributions to qualify for a full state pension. Government is making headway in making these repayments, but the scale of the problem is vast, and it will take time to complete but in the meantime many of these people have been under financial strain that they didn’t need to be.”Ĭivil servants also made mistakes around incorrect National Insurance records, especially “home responsibilities protection”.įor those who reached the state pension age before 6 April 2010, HRP reduced the number of qualifying years needed for a basic state pension if someone stayed at home to care for children, or for a person who was sick or disabled. Ms Morissey said: “Many of these underpayments go back years and amount to thousands of pounds. Helen Morissey, of the broker Hargreaves Lansdown, added that the mistakes primarily affected women who retired before 2016 under the “old” state pension system, who were owed uplifts in their pension when their husbands retired or died. In the Department for Work and Pensions, around a third of staff were not working in its Westminster headquarters during the third week of April, official data shows. The record number of overall errors come as concerns rise over the number of civil servants working from home. Some state pensions were overpaid, but at just a fraction of overall underpayments, at £100m. Civil servant mistakes accounted for £580m, or 87pc, of total state pension underpayments. Overall state pension underpayments hit a record high last year, with retirees missing out on £670m, up by almost a quarter compared with the year prior. “Urgent action is needed to drive up standards of administration so that pensioners can have confidence that the pension they are being paid is correct,” he said. Sir Steve Webb, a former pensions minister, said that the scale of state pension mistakes was “truly shocking”. The revelation comes as separate data reveals a third of DWP staff were not working at its head office at the end of last month. More than one in 20 retirees were underpaid after a litany of “official errors”, the Department for Work and Pensions admitted on Thursday. Retirees missed out on more than £500m in state pension payments in the last tax year due to thousands of errors by civil servants, official data has revealed.
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