Women’s underpaid state pension

JJC1956

Thrugelmir said:

JJC1956 said:

Silvertabby said:

JJC1956 said:

Silvertabby said:

Mariolanza said:

But how do you know if one has been underpaid??

Mostly applies to some women who opted to pay the married woman's stamp.  The problem is due to their State pensions not being increased when their husbands reached SPA (or should have reached SPA) when the women should have benefitted from their husband's NI contributions.

Women who - like the two I mentioned - never paid the married woman's stamp aren't affected.  However, I suspect that many have shoved in time-wasting claims 'because they can'.

Sorry, but I simply don't believe any woman who says that she doesn't know if she paid the married woman's rate of NI or not.  Those who did had to sign a declaration confirming that they understood that they were reliant on their husbands NI contributions for the bulk of their own State pensions.  My aunt always regretted going down this road, but the difference in the NI she actually paid was the difference between affording or not affording a mortgage, so it must have been a considerable amount.

Bottom line is that women who married for the first time after April 1977 certainly didn't pay the married woman's stamp, as that was when it was ended for new applicants.

No Silvertabby, the bottom line is well over 100,000 (some women in your words) have missed out on a decent living from their husband’s pension. 

You miss my point - I'm saying that if the women who clearly aren't affected by this debacle didn't waste DWP's time by bunging in false claims, then claims submitted by the ones who are entitled to payments would be dealt with much more quickly.

Of the two women I mentioned in my first post, both are like me.  Married after 1977, never paid married woman's stamp and in receipt of full State pensions in their own right.  Yet they submitted claims 'just in case'.  

I think you said a lot more than that, you wrote a whole paragraph saying how much you didn’t believe women knew whether they made NI contributions or not, to be honest your post is not at all helpful, you are playing the blame game, let the DWP get their finger out and sort the problem out, irrespective of whether a couple of women you know shouldn’t have applied.

There are only so many hours in a working day. Dealing with non productive issues seems to be a culture these days. Makes you wonder who is actually working.........

Depends what you mean by “non productive issues’. 
I have personally tried to contact in the last 6 months: HMRC, DWP and the Passport Office (HOME OFFICE). All to no avail, as someone posted earlier, the call centres have been outsourced to companies that now have total access to your records of calls and emails and if you are nice to them they will send an email to the Department you want to contact and put ‘Priority’ on the email, happened to me twice in April with 2 different Departments. 

JJC1956

As I said before your posts are no help whatsoever, you seem to have the hump because a friend of yours was picked on 50 years ago and you know 2 women that tried it on.

Where did I say ALL women should bung in a claim?

The original thread didn't start because someone wanted to air their views about the DWP, it started because the MP Stephen Timms found a flaw in the pension system and decided to do something about it, the problem was so big that the DWP had to recruit extra staff, if the system was perfect no action would be required but obviously like the rest of the Civil Service, there are discrepancies that when they come to light need to be dealt with.

Click on the link that Sparky0138 posted earlier, it doesn’t make good reading.

JJC1956

Last message was for Silvertabby

Silvertabby

Ho hum....

Thrugelmir

JJC1956 said:

Thrugelmir said:

JJC1956 said:

Silvertabby said:

JJC1956 said:

Silvertabby said:

Mariolanza said:

But how do you know if one has been underpaid??

Mostly applies to some women who opted to pay the married woman's stamp.  The problem is due to their State pensions not being increased when their husbands reached SPA (or should have reached SPA) when the women should have benefitted from their husband's NI contributions.

Women who - like the two I mentioned - never paid the married woman's stamp aren't affected.  However, I suspect that many have shoved in time-wasting claims 'because they can'.

Sorry, but I simply don't believe any woman who says that she doesn't know if she paid the married woman's rate of NI or not.  Those who did had to sign a declaration confirming that they understood that they were reliant on their husbands NI contributions for the bulk of their own State pensions.  My aunt always regretted going down this road, but the difference in the NI she actually paid was the difference between affording or not affording a mortgage, so it must have been a considerable amount.

Bottom line is that women who married for the first time after April 1977 certainly didn't pay the married woman's stamp, as that was when it was ended for new applicants.

No Silvertabby, the bottom line is well over 100,000 (some women in your words) have missed out on a decent living from their husband’s pension. 

You miss my point - I'm saying that if the women who clearly aren't affected by this debacle didn't waste DWP's time by bunging in false claims, then claims submitted by the ones who are entitled to payments would be dealt with much more quickly.

Of the two women I mentioned in my first post, both are like me.  Married after 1977, never paid married woman's stamp and in receipt of full State pensions in their own right.  Yet they submitted claims 'just in case'.  

I think you said a lot more than that, you wrote a whole paragraph saying how much you didn’t believe women knew whether they made NI contributions or not, to be honest your post is not at all helpful, you are playing the blame game, let the DWP get their finger out and sort the problem out, irrespective of whether a couple of women you know shouldn’t have applied.

There are only so many hours in a working day. Dealing with non productive issues seems to be a culture these days. Makes you wonder who is actually working.........

Depends what you mean by “non productive issues’. 
I have personally tried to contact in the last 6 months: HMRC, DWP and the Passport Office (HOME OFFICE). All to no avail, as someone posted earlier, the call centres have been outsourced to companies that now have total access to your records of calls and emails and if you are nice to them they will send an email to the Department you want to contact and put ‘Priority’ on the email, happened to me twice in April with 2 different Departments. 

People have only one pair of hands. They can either spend their time being productive and perform tasks that have an output. Alternatively their time spent is spent dealing with unneccessary queries whatever form they take. I'd be a rich person for the number of times I've picked up the phone only to be asked have you read the email i sent. Needless to say my response was curt. Interuptions distract and waste time. 

JJC1956

Thrugelmir said:

JJC1956 said:

Thrugelmir said:

JJC1956 said:

Silvertabby said:

JJC1956 said:

Silvertabby said:

Mariolanza said:

But how do you know if one has been underpaid??

Mostly applies to some women who opted to pay the married woman's stamp.  The problem is due to their State pensions not being increased when their husbands reached SPA (or should have reached SPA) when the women should have benefitted from their husband's NI contributions.

Women who - like the two I mentioned - never paid the married woman's stamp aren't affected.  However, I suspect that many have shoved in time-wasting claims 'because they can'.

Sorry, but I simply don't believe any woman who says that she doesn't know if she paid the married woman's rate of NI or not.  Those who did had to sign a declaration confirming that they understood that they were reliant on their husbands NI contributions for the bulk of their own State pensions.  My aunt always regretted going down this road, but the difference in the NI she actually paid was the difference between affording or not affording a mortgage, so it must have been a considerable amount.

Bottom line is that women who married for the first time after April 1977 certainly didn't pay the married woman's stamp, as that was when it was ended for new applicants.

No Silvertabby, the bottom line is well over 100,000 (some women in your words) have missed out on a decent living from their husband’s pension. 

You miss my point - I'm saying that if the women who clearly aren't affected by this debacle didn't waste DWP's time by bunging in false claims, then claims submitted by the ones who are entitled to payments would be dealt with much more quickly.

Of the two women I mentioned in my first post, both are like me.  Married after 1977, never paid married woman's stamp and in receipt of full State pensions in their own right.  Yet they submitted claims 'just in case'.  

I think you said a lot more than that, you wrote a whole paragraph saying how much you didn’t believe women knew whether they made NI contributions or not, to be honest your post is not at all helpful, you are playing the blame game, let the DWP get their finger out and sort the problem out, irrespective of whether a couple of women you know shouldn’t have applied.

There are only so many hours in a working day. Dealing with non productive issues seems to be a culture these days. Makes you wonder who is actually working.........

Depends what you mean by “non productive issues’. 
I have personally tried to contact in the last 6 months: HMRC, DWP and the Passport Office (HOME OFFICE). All to no avail, as someone posted earlier, the call centres have been outsourced to companies that now have total access to your records of calls and emails and if you are nice to them they will send an email to the Department you want to contact and put ‘Priority’ on the email, happened to me twice in April with 2 different Departments. 

People have only one pair of hands. They can either spend their time being productive and perform tasks that have an output. Alternatively their time spent is spent dealing with unneccessary queries whatever form they take. I'd be a rich person for the number of times I've picked up the phone only to be asked have you read the email i sent. Needless to say my response was curt. Interuptions distract and waste time. 

I agree but the call centres I talked to in the last couple of weeks, (HMRC and DWP queries, as I have just reached State pension age) do not have access to my records, they only have details of any post or emails that I have sent to the relevant departments, so the call centre can only filter my calls to whichever department I want but then someone in that department has to look at the emails before giving them to a person qualified to deal with my request, which means that my original call has now passed through TWO pair of hands.

Check out the link on Sparky0138 that was posted this morning.

if a query is time consuming (bit more complicated) it is not being dealt with as targets won’t be met!!! Therefore being productive in this case means letting people down that might have been waiting the longest.

xylophone

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/160372/shameful-shambles-of-dwps-long-term-underpayment-of-state-pensioners-with-little-interest-in-full-consequences/

may be of interest.

DWP will only contact pensioners when it finds through these exercises that they have been underpaid, and admits that many more are not receiving their due – these “risk missing out on significant sums”, with “little guidance for those currently claiming State Pension who are concerned that they have been underpaid” and people left “in the dark over their entitlement”.  

It seems to me that the words in bold are germane to the issue.

Women who paid the "small stamp" may well have been aware that they would be dependent on their husband's contributions but I wonder how aware they were of what exactly this meant in terms of amount due and the administration of the service?

It would seem that a significant number of those whose husbands reached NPA before 2008 were unaware that any pension (or pension top up) that they may have been due required an application to DWP?

There was also the question of a widow's entitlement to a top up to BSP or to a proportion of the husband's ASP - this could be a complex calculation and I am doubtful about the number of widows who understood it, particularly where a GMP/COD was involved.

xylophone

with unneccessary queries whatever form they take. I'd be a rich person for the number of times I've picked up the phone only to be asked have you read the email i sent. Needless to say my response was curt. Interuptions distract and waste time. 

I  (together with colleagues) worked in a role requiring significant telephone contact with members of the public and professional persons. 

It was an absolute requirement to treat all enquirers with patience and courtesy, whatever the nature of the enquiry.

Any complaint from an enquirer concerning a "curt" (unhelpful? condescending?) response would have led to an uncomfortable interview with a Principal.

People who need to check on (eg) the progress of an application also have to take time out in a busy day to do it - how is the time of the person paid to deal with the query any more valuable that that of the person asking the question?

sparky0138

Thought this might be helpful to some people. There is now an online form you can fill in to request information about underpaid state pension for someone who has died.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/request-information-about-underpaid-state-pension-for-someone-who-has-died

44ALLAN44

44ALLAN44 said:

I sent my letter to the above address on 15-5-2021, requesting a full review of my deceased mums pension entitlement. I waited 4 weeks and called them up to enquire whether they had received my letter. I was told they received it on 21-5-2021 and it was on the list to be dealt with by the 'new' dedicated team and I would be contacted once it had been addressed...................today is 21-8-2021 and I'm still waiting.

................a quick follow up to my post above : today is 4/07/2023 and I'm still waiting !!!