Jean Hayes and her husband Richard: ‘Thrilled’ to get £9,000 payment from DWP
Two elderly women have received around £9,000 and £5,000 in state pension payments they missed out on due to a government blunder.
Many more retired women could be in line for payouts worth thousands of pounds, plus interest, if the administrative error proves to be widespread.
A probe is now under way into the failure, which went unnoticed for more than a decade until discovered by our pensions columnist Steve Webb and This is Money.
The Government has declined to say if it will also pay compensation to women who were underpaid state pension for years because it was calculated incorrectly.
The bungle occurred because married women who retired on small state pensions before April 2016 should get an uplift to 60 per cent of their husband’s payments once he reaches retirement age too.
Since 2008, the increases are supposed to be automatic, but before that women had to apply to get the full sum they were due.
Jean Hayes, 75, pictured above with husband Richard, and Patrica Tonkin, 71, should have seen their payments hiked immediately their husbands started drawing the state pension.
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They realised they were being underpaid and contacted This is Money after our pensions agony uncle, Steve Webb, raised the alarm in a recent column.
He replied to a reader who found out by accident they had been underpaid state pension for 13 years, but only got a one-year backpayment because uplifts weren’t being applied automatically at that time.
After reading the column, Patricia’s husband Ron rang the DWP’s Pension Centre for advice.
But he was referred to staff dealing with a ‘change of circumstances’ and told a review of his wife’s pension would take ‘weeks if not months’.
Webb believes the Government must carry out an urgent investigation to uncover any cases of married women who could have missed out on thousands of pounds in state pension – see the DWP’s response on the right.
A former Pensions Minister, who is now a partner at Lane Clark & Peacock, Webb adds that the trawl back through the records should include older women who reached state pension age before 17 March 2008.
That is the date when the Government began uplifting married women’s payments automatically, rather than writing to those affected and asking them to apply for an increase.
Women who lost out under this old system can still get one year of backpayment, and start receiving a higher state pension going forward, he points out. Read his full comments below.
Jean Hayes and her husband Richard, 76, who live in Hampshire, told us she was getting £60.72 a week in basic state pension instead of £77.45, or 60 per cent of his basic state pension of £129.20 a week.
After we contacted the DWP about her case, the former retail worker received a payment of £8,822.41 the following day, plus £274.09 in interest to cover the period April 2008 to February 2020.
Mrs Hayes’s total state pension has been increased to £94.90 per week.
She said she was ‘thrilled’ to get the payout and thanked This is Money for intervening on her behalf.
Patricia Tonkin and husband Ron, 70, contacted us to say she was getting £56.85 of basic state pension a week.
When we raised her case with the DWP, it deposited £4,986.12 in her bank account the next day, and also paid her £73.28 in interest for the period March 2015 to February 2020.
The retired teacher, from Wiltshire, will get a total of £82.20 per week from now onward.
This is Money asked the DWP why staff initially told Mr Tonkin it would take ‘weeks if not months’ to review his wife’s case, and whether this was its typical response time.
However, the DWP did not reply to our questions.
Mr Tonkin was unhappy with how the DWP dealt with his phone call, saying: ‘When an individual tries to chase up things, they get fobbed off.’
He says his wife will decide what to do with the payout.
‘It’s money she should have had. I expect she will spend it on our grandchildren, and maybe a holiday. It’s our 50th anniversary next year.’
Meanwhile, Audrey and Brian Watson, whose question to Steve Webb led us to investigate cases of married women being underpaid state pension, are still battling to get her more than one year of backpayment.
The couple, from Staffordshire, have lost an appeal against this decision, which is because they reached state pension age before uplifts started being applied automatically in 2008.
The DWP sent out letters about applying for an increase to those affected, but the Watsons are certain they didn’t receive one, and insist they would have acted on it if they had.
They are considering their options, and Steve Webb has offered support in their efforts to get Mrs Watson a bigger payout.
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