§ Mr. Rookerasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is his latest estimate of the number of married women who have failed to obtain a pension in their own right due to the operation of the half-test rule; how many of these women have actually paid a full national insurance stamp for more than half of their total working life; and what would be the cost of awarding pensions to them, if the abolition of the rule were retrospective.
§ Mr. OrmeThis is an area in which it is very difficult to make reliable estimates. However, it is estimated that the 703W number of married women over pension age who are excluded by the half-test but who would otherwise satisfy the contribution conditions for retirement pension on their own contributions is perhaps 300,000. This figure includes those women who would qualify for a pension on their own contributions during the period until their husbands retired and until they qualified for a pension on his contributions, and also those women who, in the absence of the half-test, could qualify for a pension on their own contributions at a higher rate than that available on their husbands' contributions. Perhaps one-third of the 300,000 have a full record of contributions or credits for at least half their working lives.
The cost of awarding pensions to these 300,000 women on the basis that the half-test did not apply, and at current rates from a current date, might be of the order of £100 million a year. These figures, however, take no account of the number of women who decided not to continue paying contributions after marriage because of the half-test but who would have done so if there had been no half-test. As my hon. Friend will be aware, the half-test is being abolished for married women who reach pension age from 6th April 1979.