Govt to pay out £1bn after chronic state pension underpayment

134,000 people – mostly women – affected

Jenna Brown
clock • 4 min read

The government is to distribute up to £1bn to 134,000 people after underpaying their state pension over the course of several decades with 90% of those affected being women.

Out of 134,000 cases, about 94,000 are still alive and some 40,000 have died and payments could be made to estates.  The data was released as part of a National Audit Office (NAO) report on the scandal. The report found the biggest error was an underpayment of £128,000, it added errors go back as far as 1985. About one in eight arrears payments so far is for £40,000 or more. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) still has no agreed plan for dealing with deceased cases. Even in the ‘correction' exercise, DWP staff were initially getting about an eighth of cases incorrect. Th...

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