Government ‘as good as gives up’ on mothers missing millions in state pensions

The DWP Annual report for 2024/25, published yesterday (Thursday), contains a shocking reduction in the amount of state pension arrears the DWP now expects to pay out to mothers with errors on their National Insurance record due to missing Home Responsibilities Protection.

This is not because the government thinks the problem is any smaller than before, but because it has slashed the proportion of entitled women who it now thinks it will be able to find. This is primarily due to the failure of a mass letter-writing campaign by HMRC which had an extremely poor response.

The issue arises because many thousands of mothers are missing ‘Home Responsibilities Protection’ (HRP) on their National Insurance record. This was a form of protection for the NI record of mothers (and some fathers) who received child benefit for a child under 16 since 1978. Such years should have generated a form of NI credit which would have helped to boost the state pension of many such women.

When DWP undertook full sample checks of state pensions following a previous set of large-scale errors, it discovered many cases where mothers did not have HRP on their record. This largely arose from claims made before 2000 where it was not required to put an NI number on the Child Benefit claim form and therefore such claims were not linked to the NI record correctly.

To track down such women, the Government undertook a publicity campaign which included letters from HMRC to 370,000 people, of which 257,000 are already over pension age. However, the letters told people to use an online checker to see if they were entitled and to use an online claim form to apply. The response to these letters was – predictably – poor, with recipients put off by the online claim process, thinking the letters might be scams, or not understanding the issue.

The result of this – revealed in the latest DWP annual report (p129) - is that the Government has so far corrected the records of just 12,379 pensioners, paying out £104m. But this is well short of the original estimate of well over £1 billion that was due to such women. The Department now expects to spend just £29.8m more on future corrections and has removed £1 billion set aside for such payments in its accounts.

The report reveals (p294) that the reason for this is that the ‘take-up’ of corrected HRP, which was previously estimated to be 90% in 2024/25 is now put at just 8%. This means that DWP expects that more than 9 in 10 of those who are thought to be eligible will not get what they are entitled to.

LCP Partner and former Pensions Minister Steve Webb first raised this issue with DWP more than fifteen years ago and an initial correction exercise was undertaken at the time. But since then the problem has grown considerably and, as things stand, is likely to remain unresolved.

DWP say that their strategy now will rely on revising material on gov.uk, looking at messaging in annual uprating letters, undertaking ‘regular communications activity through the year’, and ‘strengthening ongoing relationships with external stakeholder groups’.

Commenting, Steve Webb, partner at pension consultants LCP said:

“DWP’s latest report is a hammer blow to over 100,000 mothers who are receiving reduced state pensions because of errors on their NI record. The Government’s letter-writing campaign has been a dismal failure and this was entirely predictable given its reliance on a complicated online claims process.

Although there will still be some ongoing publicity, the figures in the annual report are an admission that the Government itself does not expect these efforts to have much impact. In effect, the Government has all but given up on these mothers and this is totally unacceptable.

It is time for a fresh campaign of direct mail to the women potentially affected, this time making it much easier for women to apply and supported by a fresh publicity blitz.”