§ Mrs. Currieasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what progress has been made in ensuring payment of pensions to married women qualifying by the abolition of the half-test; what further steps he is taking to bring their entitlement to the attention of possible beneficiaries; and whether he will take action to overcome any possible unfairness arising from the way in which contributors were credited into the national insurance scheme in 1948.
§ Mr. NewtonI am glad to say that we have now identified, and awarded pensions to, some 20,000 of the 277W 25,000 married women we estimate will benefit from the abolition of the half-test, including some 600 who are living overseas. I am grateful to the Department's staff who have achieved this.
We remain anxious to hear from those we have not been able to identify from our records. To this end, we have arranged for advertisements in the national press, women's magazines and publications for retired people; for posters in DHSS local offices, post offices, citizens advice bureaux and doctors' surgeries; and for a special leaflet to be available to those who inquire. We have also written to all British embassies and high commissions, asking them to take appropriate steps to seek to inform women living abroad who may have an entitlement. It is important that anyone who thinks she may be entitled to a pension as a result of this change should contact us before 22 December 1985, since benefits cannot normally be backdated more than a year.
No one who actually paid contributions can be disadvantaged by the transitional arrangements made in 1948, when existing contributors were credited into the new scheme by a system of credits whose number depended on a randomly allocated suffix to their national insurance number. There may, however, be a very small number of cases in which the marginal effects of these arrangements operate to prevent the award of a pension for which the number of credits, as distinct from actual contributions, is a crucial factor. I regret that there is no practicable way of identifying these cases, but we will consider sympathetically any which are brought to our attention.