5,000 women could be owed pension payouts ‘similar to a lottery win’

MORE than 5,000 women receiving pensions of just over £1 a week could be owed sums similar to a small lottery win of £45,000, an expert said yesterday.

The Government is currently sending out thousands of letters to wives, widows and divorcees who were underpaid state pensions for years in a scandal expected to cost £3billion.

Former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb said 5,159 of the women could be owed an average of £45,000. They were unable to claim a state pension in their own right, but could have done so on their husband’s work record. Instead they had minuscule ‘graduated retirement benefit’ (GRB) pensions paying an average of £1.24 a week.

Sir Steve said the group should contact the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as soon as possible. He said: ‘It is incredible there are thousands of women getting such tiny pensions, but even more incredible that many could potentially be entitled to tens of thousands in back-payments. It is as if they are sitting on unclaimed winning lottery tickets.

‘It is very important that women on these very small pensions make contact with the DWP as soon as possible to see if they could be entitled to a windfall.’ The 5,000 are able to claim back the money they missed out on because the DWP considers they have simof ply deferred their claim to the married woman’s state pension they were entitled to when their husband turned 65.

Sir Steve, now a partner at consultants Lane Clark and Peacock, said the amount owed to women receiving tiny GRB payments could easily be £250million. The former Liberal Democrat MP stressed that women he had helped included one who was entitled to more than £60,000. Carole Davies, 76,