Bentleys are advising women to check their pension entitlements. Currently only 35% of women in the UK qualify for the full £87 a week because they have not made sufficient National Insurance (NI) payments – usually as a result of giving up work to care for children.
Work and pensions secretary James Purnell is proposing an amendment to the new Pensions Bill allowing women to buy more missing years of NI contributions.
At present people can buy back six years but the new measures would allow a further six years could be purchased. It costs around £400 to purchase a missing year of NI contributions.
However, the new top-up scheme is available only to people who have already amassed at least 20 years or more of NI contributions, which means that many women could still miss out.
John Shaw, partner at Bentleys said: “According to the department for work and pensions, up to 555,000 people could benefit from the policy change, but in reality it only expects 20% of these to take advantage of the scheme.
The measure is the latest part of the government’s reform programme which aims to make the state pension system fairer for women”.
Mr Purnell is expected to announce a new system of NI credits which will recognise caring for children or a disabled person in the same way as paid work.