WHY IT IS TIME TO RIGHT THIS WRONG By Sir Steve Webb

YOU would imagine that once you claim your state pension, the Government will pay you whatever you are due. But this year we’ve discovered that this is not the case for tens of thousands of married women.

Under the old state pension system, a married woman was entitled to a basic state pension at 60 pc of the rate paid to her husband. But prior to a rule change on March 17, 2008, this pension was not paid automatically. Women who had already claimed a pension when they turned 60 had to fill in exactly the same claim form again when their husband turned 65 in order to qualify for an uplift.

Incredibly, as Money Mail discovered this year, the practice back then was to issue two claim forms to the husband when he turned 65, rather than send one directly to his wife. As a result, many thousands of women missed out and never got the higher pension to which they were entitled.

Given the complexity of the old state pension system, it can be extremely difficult for people to know if they are on the correct rate or not. So the onus should have been on the Government to make sure this happened.

It is time for the Government to right this wrong. It has the records to identify the women who have missed out and could pay them the missing pension they would have received.

If t he Government won’t budge, then I hope that the Parliamentary Ombudsman will look into this clear case of maladministration which has cost t housands of married women millions of pounds.