Why were some women underpaid State Pension and how do I check if I am owed money?

Full answer

This underpayment issue arose from specific historic rules around how some married women's, widows', and older women's State Pensions should have been automatically recalculated or uprated, where DWP systems in some cases failed to apply the correct increase. **The main groups affected** The underpayments have primarily affected several distinct groups: married women whose State Pension should have been automatically increased to a higher rate based on their husband's National Insurance record once he started claiming his own pension (without the woman needing to actively claim this increase herself); widows whose pension should have been recalculated after their husband's death to reflect his National Insurance record; and women over 80 who were entitled to a certain minimum weekly pension rate regardless of their own contribution record, but were not receiving it. **Why this happened** Under the OLD (pre-2016) State Pension system, certain automatic increases and recalculations were meant to happen without the pensioner needing to make a new claim -- however, DWP's systems and processes in some cases failed to correctly apply these automatic increases, particularly around the point a spouse began claiming their own pension, or after bereavement, leading to years of underpayment for those affected that went uncorrected until a wider review identified the scale of the problem. **The DWP correction exercise** DWP has been conducting a large-scale review, contacting identified affected pensioners (or their estates, where the pensioner has since died) to correct records and pay arrears -- if you fall within one of the affected groups and have not yet been contacted, you do not necessarily need to wait, since you can proactively contact the Pension Service to ask them to check your record. **Worked example** A woman reaching State Pension age under the old rules had a lower pension based on her own limited National Insurance record. When her husband later reached State Pension age and began claiming his own pension, her pension should have automatically increased to reflect a proportion of his record -- but due to the administrative failure, this increase was never applied, meaning she was underpaid for potentially several years until identified and corrected, at which point DWP would calculate and pay the backdated arrears owed. **This mainly affects the OLD State Pension system** This specific underpayment issue relates primarily to the pre-2016 (old/basic) State Pension system's automatic increase and recalculation rules -- people who reached State Pension age under the NEW State Pension system (generally, women reaching State Pension age after April 2016) are less likely to be affected by this specific historic issue, since the new system's rules work differently. **Practical tip** If you (or a late relative) are a married woman, widow, or a woman over 80 who reached State Pension age under the old system, and you suspect your pension may be too low, contact the Pension Service directly to ask for your record to be checked, rather than assuming you will automatically be contacted as part of the DWP's ongoing correction exercise.

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