Angela Crawley – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angela Crawley on 2016-01-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of implementing a scheme based on the actuarial pension model to increase the speed at which women born in the 1950s qualify for state pension.

Justin Tomlinson

The State Pension is funded through the National Insurance scheme which does not bear comparison with a commercially operated one.

Although eligibility for the State Pension is dependent in part on the payment of National Insurance, the National Insurance system is not an individual pension fund. National Insurance credits are available for many people to help them build entitlement towards the State Pension. National Insurance contributions also give entitlement to a range of other benefits such as Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance and Carer’s Allowance.

Future entitlement to benefits is a matter for the Government and Parliament to decide, and the changes to the State Pension age have been made in conjunction with introducing the triple-lock protection of the basic State Pension, the introduction of the new State Pension, and the protection of other pensioner benefits.