HMRC is raising awareness as countless Brits could be receiving far less state pension than they deserve due to a fault in the system. The warning applies to all parents who had children and claimed Child Benefit before the year 2000.
Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, the department warned: “If you claimed Child Benefit before May 2000, you may be missing Home Responsibility Protection (HRP) from your National Insurance record.” Brits can use the eligibility checker on the gov.uk website to check if this is the case for them and claim any state pension they may be missing out on.
The Home Responsibilities Protection is part of the older benefit system and has since been replaced with National Insurance credits. Both serve the same purpose; to bolster the National Insurance records of parents who may have had to take time off work to raise their children and potentially impacting their state pension earnings as a result.
To claim any part of the new state pension you need to have paid a minimum of 10 years worth of National Insurance, and 35 years to get the full new state pension. Due to the glitch in the system, some people may not have had the HRP applied to their National Insurance record and therefore have gaps in their record which could leave them just short of these qualifying benchmarks.
Parents who applied for Child Benefit between 1978 and 2000 may also have left their National Insurance number off of the application, meaning the HRP couldn’t be applied to their records at all. The department previously noted that missing HRP on your record “doesn’t automatically mean their State Pension calculation is incorrect”, but makes it highly likely that those years you spent raising a family have greatly impacted your retirement.
Checking your record online only takes a few minutes through the HMRC app or the gov.uk website. If you find you are missing some due payments, you can claim HRP online or via post. You can also apply to transfer HRP to yourself from someone else, in cases where the Child Benefit may have been in your spouses’ name but they’re already receiving full state pension.