Sports Illustrated April 11 1983 NC State Wins

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The DWP started an official correction exercise – known as a Legal Entitlements and Administrative Practices (LEAP) - process in January 2021. It's due to be completed by the end of this year. In response to the ruling Sir Steve Webb, who helped uncover the scandal surrounding women who had been underpaid their state pension, said it offered women a ‘glimmer of hope’. At this point, Daphne was entitled to 60% married woman’s pension (instead of the 42% she received in her own right). But she would only be paid this higher rate if she submitted another state pension claim form. When her husband Tim reached state pension age in early 2008, he applied for his own state pension over the phone and answered all the questions he was asked, including about Daphne’s state pension.

My husband reads paperwork carefully and I would obviously have made a second claim for the higher state pension if anyone had actually told us that was how the system worked.’ He said that the DWP measures to ensure women knew how the system worked were ‘highly ineffective’ such as leaflets that had to be requested and relying on husbands passing on forms to their wives. Find out more: how much state pension will I get? What to do if you think your state pension is too low According to former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb, many women didn't know they had to claim for a second time once their husbands reached state pension age.In response, a spokesperson from the DWP told Which?: 'As upheld by a court last year, married women whose husbands reached state pension age after them, but before March 17 2008, are required by law to make a claim for an uplift to their state pension. However, Webb added that this ruling ‘opens up the potential’ for other women to claim compensation where they, and their husbands, followed all the correct processes but were never sent the necessary claim form. There is also a chance that the Parliamentary Ombudsman may rule in favour of the wider group of women in a similar situation.

Married women who reached state pension age before April 2016 are entitled to 60% of their husband’s basic state pension when he retires. This is called a category BL uplift.

She complained to the DWP about maladministration on the basis that if she had ever been told she needed to fill in a second form she would have done so.