Stephen Doughty – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Doughty on 2014-04-30.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the letter dated 5 March 2014 from the Minister of State for Pensions to the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, what estimate he has made of the number of service spouses who will be affected by his plans to bring forward legislative proposals to make national insurance credits available for past periods for service spouses.

Steve Webb

Subject to Royal Assent of the Pensions Bill a duty will be placed on the Secretary of State to make regulations to allow service spouses and civil partners, due to reach State Pension age from 6 April 2016, to apply for National Insurance credits for periods during which they accompanied their husband, wife or civil partner on a posting outside the UK. The regulations will make provision to allow credits for periods between 1975/76 and 2010.

We are working with the Ministry of Defence on the finer details of the scheme including the manner in which applications will need to be made and the precise date when the administrative arrangements will be in place.

We estimate that up to 20,000 individuals could have a higher single-tier pension from these credits as some individuals may, at state pension age, already have sufficient qualifying years to gain a full single-tier pension.