PENSION SECRECY SHUTTERS PULLED DOWN

The Department for Work and Pensions has pulled down the shutters on Freedom of Information requests about the new state pension and the letters written to women whose pension age was postponed twice.

The DWP had been providing a lot of useful data which I used in two extensive blogposts (see links at the end of this post). But follow-up applications for further information have been refused. On the face of it they are simple enough requests.

• How many men and women will get no pension under the new state pension rules? REFUSED
• How many letters written to women about the rise in their state pension age were returned undelivered? REFUSED
• What did the DWP do to contact the women whose letters were returned undelivered? REFUSED

These decisions to hide information rather than reveal it raise the question - what is so uncomfortable in the truth that the Department wants to bury it? 

Here are the details.

No state pension
Under the new state pension those with fewer than ten years of National Insurance contributions will get no pension. Under the old rules (since 2010) people with under ten years contributions get a pro rata pension of 1/30th of the full amount for each year of contributions. Under the new pension they get nothing.

Estimates for how many would be affected by this rule were published in an Impact Assessment in May 2014. But they lacked detail and were not broken down into men and women. The details are important because it is expected this rule will adversely affect far more women than men.

So on 3 November 2015 I asked for that detail. On 23 November 2015 I was told that it would not be provided "because the information is intended for publication at a future date".

UPDATE
On 14 January 2016 the DWP published Impact of New State Pension (nSP) on an Individual's Pension Entitlement which contains some more information (p.17). It shows that from 2016 to 2050 a total of 110,000 people will get no new State pension because they have fewer than ten qualifying years of NICs. Of those 110,000, 80,000 (73%) are women and 30,000 (27%) are men. It does not break the numbers down into those in the UK and those living in other countries.

No pension age delay letter
Part of the changes to state pension is the rise in the State Pension Age. This has hit women harder than men and data provided under FOI showed that the Department failed for 14 years to begin to inform women of changes passed in 1995. That exercise stopped in March 2011. Women's state pension age was changed again in November 2011 and the DWP then restarted the letters from January 2012 to inform women of their new state pension age including both changes. That was often the first they had heard of any change. But many women claim they never received such a letter.

A global study of data quality to be published by the credit reference and address validation agency Experian found that 23% of customer prospect data - including names and addresses - contained errors. That does not mean nearly a quarter will not arrive. But many were clearly at risk of not doing so. That raises the question of what the Department did to deal with this problem.


So on 23 November 2015 I made an FOI request to ask how many letters were returned undelivered and what action was taken when they were. On 21 December 2015 the DWP confirmed it held the information but refused the request on grounds of cost. 
I have asked for a review of this decision.




Further information

Women will get less than men from the new state pension

Women given just two years' notice of state pension age rise 


version 1.10
19 January 2016