Last week, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) announced that it will start writing to thousands of older people this autumn who may have been underpaid their State Pension due to missing information on their National Insurance (NI) record. The issue affects mostly women in their 60s and 70s who may have Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) missing from their NI record.
HRP was a scheme designed to help protect parents’ and carers’ entitlement to the State Pension and was replaced by NI credits from April 6, 2010. HMRC is using NI records to identify as many people as possible who might have been entitled to HRP between 1978 and 2010 and have no HRP on their NI record.
After May 2000 it became mandatory to include a NI number on claims so people claiming after this point will not have been affected. It is estimated that 187,000 people are due an average of £5,000 in back payments.
