Steve Webb
@stevewebb1
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Steve Webb, formerly Minister for Pensions, now partner at Lane Clark & Peacock. All tweets personal views. steve.webb @lcp .uk.com he/him
Olveston, Bristol
Joined June 2009
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I wonder if twitter-economists can explain something to me?! If energy price hikes mean households will have to slash other spending, why does the Bank of England need to hike interest rates to dampen down … household spending?
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I know I’m more interested in the position of pensioners than some, but I’m genuinely shocked that the Chancellor has done nothing at all for pensioners for whom fuel bills make a large part of their budgets and face hikes in bills with no additional help
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I'm quite sure that the DWP civil servants who briefed their Secretary of State for this interview will have explained that extra earnings are 'tapered' against your Universal Credit, so you have to do a lot more than two extra hours to get £20 net. And yet...
"£20 a week is about two hours extra work every week, we will be seeing what we can do help people perhaps secure those extra hours”
On
#BBCBreakfast
Work and Pension Secretary Thérèse Coffey says the increase to universal credit was always temporary.
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2016 Carillion annual report says dividend ‘has increased in each of 16 years since formation of company’; Is this really acceptable alongside a pension fund deficit over half a billion pounds?
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Ombudsman says DWP 'has refused to comply' with its ruling on state pension age changes. There is no point Parliament having an Ombudsman if the Government ignores its carefully considered recommendations
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Slightly puzzled at the lack of reaction to today’s govt consultation on raising age for free prescriptions from sixty to state pension age …..?
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Shocking post here from
@davidhencke
- staff working on correcting state pensions have been told to drop complex cases (presumably mainly widows) and prioritise simpler cases, so as to get the volumes up. Words fail me.
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So the eventual £850m cost of the Lifetime Allowance policy gets you an extra 15,000 in work at a cost of £56,000 each!!
@Steven_Swinford
OBR says govt £7bn package of support will see 110,000 return to workplace by 2027-28
* Free childcare offer - 60,000
* Universal credit childcare support - 15,000
* UC sanctions - 10,000
* Scrapping lifetime allowance - 15,000
* Disability employment - 10,000
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Hi
@MartinSLewis
- could you ask the Chancellor to confirm that the poorest pensioners get nothing from the council tax cut (as they get 100% rebates) and have to repay the £200 energy discount through higher bills for years to come, so no net help overall??
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If DWP refuse to pay WASPI compensation in line with Ombudsman, I think the Government has *zero* chance of winning a vote in Parliament in support of that position in an Election year
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I’ve had this message from someone working inside the DWP on the underpaid women’s state pension issue. If it is the case that DWP are telling staff not to alert women who they encounter who need to claim an uplift, this would be a disgrace.
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Wowsers - DWP just published new figures showing they estimate 187,000 people (mostly mothers) underpaid £1 billion in state pension owing to errors in credits for time at home with children. But how long will it take to get them onto the right amount?!
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Good to see the DWP entering into the spirit of my ‘subject access request’.... 😱
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As expected, comfortable government majority (300 v 229) to overturn House of Lords defeat on pension triple lock. Lords will now have to decide whether to give in or try again!
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Whilst all attention is elsewhere, DWP has just published its annual report which has two staggering admissions on state pension errors, including a whole new category of error which I first raised with them in 2008 1/3
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Shockingly inadequate answer at DWP oral questions in the Commons this afternoon re underpaid state pensions. Asking people to apply one-by-one and navigate a complex system cannot be the answer to a systematic problem when the government already *knows* who is missing out!
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A pleasure to debate the future of the state pension on
@BBCNewsnight
tonight. Seems incredible to me that anyone could argue that a state pension that only replaces a quarter of the average wage is an adequate basis for retirement!
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Gosh, didn't see that one coming! Just had an email from
@admiraluk
to say that because car insurance claims are down, they're refunding £25 of our annual premium - I'm impressed! We normally shop around every year, but I'll be more inclined to stick with them now
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Great sadness in the Webb household this weekend as we said farewell to much-loved Sally. She gave us so many happy memories over the last 11 years and taught us more about what love means.
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** Personal news klaxon ** After four happy and productive years
@Royallondon
, working with some great people, I'm moving on. Very excited to be joining the team
@LCP_Actuaries
- hope to learn a lot and hopefully contribute a bit as well!
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Just heard from a lady who read our story on state pensions and has just received over £7,500 for underpaid pension over the last 18 years! But what if she hadn't happened to read a newspaper article? Time for DWP to fix this systematically.
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Bit of a personal milestone today - I've been keeping a running total of the state pension lump sums received by the women pensioners who I've engaged with directly and we've just passed the £1m mark! Little did we know when we started that would just be the tip of the iceberg..
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Was wondering why Jack Leach kept cleaning his glasses ... until Mrs W points out the match was sponsored by Specsavers!
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Big thanks to
@MoneySavingExp
and
@MartinSLewis
for making our state pension petition their ‘campaign of the week’. If you agree that the Govt should use its records to identify *all* the women who are being underpaid state pensions, pls sign and retweet:
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Astonishing story here - DWP realised in 1990s there were large numbers of small errors on state pension payments but decided in 2002 not to bother fixing them. Where is the accountability in this Dept?
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Lady rang pension service for her gran re underpaid pension - fobbed off with duff information. She checked with me and rang them back - just contacted me to say they’ve apologised and are now working out the uplift. We can’t go on like this
@dwppressoffice
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Delighted to receive two emails just now in close succession from women who have received large lump sum state pension refunds (approx £7k and £9k respectively). But DWP just deposit in bank account with no explanation. We are seeking to ensure interest is added, as it should be.
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The story continues - it would add insult to injury if women who finally got their underpaid pension in a lump sum then had to pay tax on it - when many wouldn’t have paid tax if the pension had been paid correctly in the first place!
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Following defeat in court today for the Back to 60 campaign, seems likely that the Parliamentary Ombudsman is the last big hope for campaigners.
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@WASPI_Campaign
I would be happy to meet your legal team to talk through these issues. I hope this will be helpful.
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Based on this morning's inflation figures, I calculate that breaking the triple lock again, and linking the pension to earnings instead, would cost a single pensioner £442 a year. Coming on top of a cut in energy bill support, surely this would be political suicide?
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This feels like a developing scandal - people already wait four weeks in arrears for first state pension payment, but we're now hearing of people waiting for much longer and getting no information about what they will get
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The government just abolished the triple lock for one year!! Seems the PM forgot to mention it….
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Great fun discussing pensions for 90 mins on ITV tonight with
@MartinSLewis
an expert panel and a great studio audience!
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This lady got in touch after Christmas to tell me that off the back of our campaign she had gone from 86p per week in pension to over £80 per week, plus a decade of back payments. How long before you fix this DWP, how long??
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Once the maximum tax free lump sum is a fixed cash amount, first it starts being eroded by inflation and then (a future Government?) thinks £268,275 is a lot and decides to reduce it a bit, then another bit.... I think we've just seen the gradual death of tax free cash
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My thoughts in the Times today on how the social care crisis has a knock-on effect on older workers who end up stepping into the breach:
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Remarkable new calculations by my colleagues
@LCP_Actuaries
show that the state pension age rise to 67 in the next Parliament is no longer justified even on the govt’s own formula because life expectancy improvements assumed at last review didn’t happen
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I heard this week from a lady aged 90+ who had a letter from HMRC saying she may have missed out on ‘home responsibilities protection’ to boost her state pension. But she could only claim online - no paper form enclosed. Do we have to make things so difficult for people?
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If you’re a pensioner who doesn’t drive and isn’t planning to install solar panels, the Chancellor’s package of help with the cost of living isn’t going to do much for you….
#SpringStatement2022
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Good to see that the married women's underpaid state pension issue is listed to come up briefly in the House of Commons this afternoon - keen to find out more about what government is doing to address the problem
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Bit of a shocker - just heard from a lady who rang DWP about her underpaid state pension. Fobbed off with duff information (wrongly told that as long as *total* pension was over £80.45 there's no problem). Second time I've heard this. Big training issue
@dwppressoffice
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The WASPI report from the Ombudsman notes that DWP took 14 years to tell people about state pension age changes after the 1995 Act, compared with less than 1 year after the 2011 Act. This report does not however mean pensions will now be paid from 60.
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@hmtreasury
Is it fair that people who started a new job after 28th Feb don’t qualify for the Job Rescue Scheme? It’s unreasonable to expect them to go back to their old employer and ask them to ‘re-employ’ them
#askrishi
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The *other* important reason why NICs isn’t the right tax to use for extra money for care - why should top earners pay a smaller share? My letter in the Times today:
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Interesting to see that the SNP have tabled amendments to today's uprating Bill to a) legislate for triple lock for next April, b) look at 'frozen' pensioners and c) look at WASPI women's pensions. Will be interesting to see which (if any) are selected by Speaker!
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@RevRichardColes
No, not really. Ministerial service is converted into extra service in the MP scheme at MP pay, rather than making all your service count at Ministerial pay. So you get six week's worth of extra accrual but that's it. And it's funded (largely by taxpayers) rather than 'unfunded'!
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Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
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Introducing the newest member of the Webb family - Daisy the rescue retriever!
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An obscure DWP document reveals 'low hundreds of thousands' of married women with husbands over 80 are on lower pensions than they should be - and although DWP knows this, it has no plan to tell them!
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What's always struck me as noteworthy about this data is that most of the deterioration had already happened before the Pandemic - there are important 'other' factors at work here
The UK Government Actuary confirms life expectancy at retirement for Britons is now two years lower than when Ministers last reviewed the state pension age in 2017.
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Lovely leaving gifts from my friends
@RoyalLondon
- mind you, those Lamborghinis keep following me wherever I go!
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The campaign on underpaid women's state pensions goes on - whilst nearly 200,000 will (eventually) get back payments, another 50,000 get just one year's money. We need the Ombudsman to get involved:
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I have an uneasy feeling that if we are all going to be expected to work longer, they may stop people accessing their pension pots before 60. (I think this is a more likely change tomorrow than any announcement on state pension age).
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It’s been a good week! On Monday I became an honorary fellow of the Institute & Faculty of Actuaries and this evening I received this trophy for best presentation of the year from the Association of Consulting Actuaries - nice people these actuaries!
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My son just reminded me UK chairs Council of Europe from July 2017; if we delay triggering article 50 we could negotiate with ourselves ...
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Wow! Minister says DWP now has over 100 civil servants working on sorting out underpaid state pensions, and plan to employ more. When he says it’s a ‘significant legacy issue’, it’s clear he means it and suggests we’ve found a big problem.
@thisismoney
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The party manifestos now need to say what they would do about the state pension age review. We can't have 'we'll decide after we've won'!
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SUCCESS! A big thank you to all who have signed/promoted our petition on under-paid state pensions. We’ve just ticked over the 10k signatures which triggers a govt response. It increasingly looks as though this thing is bigger than we thought, so I look forward to the govt reply.
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Good to see state pensions as most read story on the BBC news website in just a few hours - let’s hope the Ombudsman realises the strength of public feeling on this issue and agrees to investigate.
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Rumour is Brexit is being delayed to give
@ShippersUnbound
and
@ChrisMasonBBC
time to get back from paternity leave to cover it ....
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With all the focus this week on the next energy bill increase, it's worth remembering that the average household on pension credit and the average widow is already in fuel poverty *before* bills rise again - our new analysis:
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Delighted to win campaign of the year for ‘underpaid women’s state pensions’ - huge credit to
@thisismoney
and
@Tanya_Jefferies
#headlinemoney
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Absolutely delighted that the campaign on underpaid state pensions has just won the 'best proactive lobbying campaign on an issue or cause' award at the
#PRWeekAwards
. Big shout out to
@thisismoney
and
@Tanya_Jefferies
who made it all possible.
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Interesting question - if you were the Minister and you now realised that 3 in every 100 state pension forecasts you send out is wrong, would you carry on sending them out??
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Today's 7.4% earnings growth figure, if applied to the new state pension rate, would take the annual new state pension through the £10,000 mark
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Very sorry to read of the death of Frank Field. He will be remembered for many things but as well as encouraging me early in my career I think of his work in defence of BHS pension scheme members which made a huge difference
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This is a real blow - Parliamentary Ombudsman telling women who didn't claim pension uplift pre 2008 rule change that he won't investigate DWP failing to make them aware (eg sending two forms to husband!). This needs to be challenged.
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Ouch! Chancellor won't be thrilled that key average earnings number out this morning is +8.5% which will feed through to a rise in the new state pension of around £900 per year to £11,500. But we estimate well over half a million pensioners will pay income tax for first time..
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I'm delighted to see that
@CommonsWorkPen
has had enough of DWP being secretive about the state pension underpayment issue and has written to the Minister demanding proper information about what is going on:
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Are you (or your mother/grandmother etc) a) a woman aged over 67 AND b) on a basic state pension under £80.45 pw AND c) married with husband on full basic pension? If yes to all 3, you need to ask DWP for an increased state pension - because they won’t be contacting you.....
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I’ve looked at Labour’s manifesto costing and can’t see an entry for money for WASPI women - have I missed it?
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Can’t help thinking the ‘other’ big energy costs story - for which govt doesn’t seem to have any proposals- is small businesses facing such a hike in energy bills that they are forced to shut abruptly. The trickle could become a flood..
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I’ve identified an interesting new group of underpaid women who DWP may not identify - those on ‘tiny’ (eg few pounds) pensions that are graduated retirement benefit only. Two cases this week got £50k and £30k backpayment. Contact me if this might be you?
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Biggest single spending commitment in
#labourmanifesto
is lump sum bill for cancelling state pension age increases - a cool £300bn!
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Thought I’d celebrate my birthday by putting out a press release on the Money Purchase Annual Allowance - truly living the dream! 🎂🎂🎉🎉
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In inflation does reach 18% by January 2023, paying pension and benefit increases of 10-11% in April 2023 because that’s what inflation was in September 2022 is going to look challenging - for the second year running…
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This is an important step forward. Looks as though *all* frontline NHS staff in Scotland caring for Covid-19 patients will be covered by full death-in-service benefits if the worst should happen, even if opted out of pension. The same should happen in rest of UK.
Bravo
@BMAScotland
@JeaneF1MSP
@scotgov
securing vital death in service benefits for NHS staff in Scotland who tragically die in service with coronavirus
All 4 UK nations *MUST* urgently address this & ensure ALL NHS staff get unreduced benefits
@BorisJohnson
@MattHancock
RT!
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Government appoints former Treasury Minister and Conservative peer to chair 'independent' review of state pension age... 🧐
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Newspapers today speculating that the highly impressive Pensions Minster, Laura Trott, is in line for a promotion. Well deserved, but galling for those who care about pensions that anyone who does a good job gets moved to something seen as ‘more important’….
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Serious question - what will MPs actually do at Westminster between now and September? If no new PM until summer recess has started? Need to get on with some non-contentious legislation in the meantime, like a new Pensions Bill (it always comes back to pensions in the end!)
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A plea to
@dwppressoffice
- as hits on our website calculator ( ) approach three quarters of a million, couldn’t *you* post some information for the public on underpaid state pensions so that they know what to do??
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Looks as though the govt has saved approaching £5bn a year by scrapping the triple lock for one year …
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Please RT: In the last year far more people than normal will have sadly become a widow or widower. Getting their state pension reviewed would not have been a priority. But if you or someone you know is in this situation and your state pension didn’t change, please let me know.
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This is absolutely bizarre! Treasury spends months saying there’s no problem and then one bit of the Government ends up spending millions to pay another bit of the Government so that Doctors can afford to go work. What a shambles...
Exclusive: NHS to pay doctors' tax bills to avoid winter crisis as government overrules civil service purdah fears
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Great to see
@Jessica__Beard
taking up the case of the ‘pre 2008’ married women who only get 1 year of their missing money. DWP reply is staggeringly disingenuous - ‘application forms were provided’ - yes, to the husband, and only if he asked for it!
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What is so revealing about this answer is that data on how long people are having to wait for their pension to be paid is not *routinely* collected as standard management info. It says everything that it would take a special exercise to find this out…
NEW: UK government says it would too be costly to respond to a question on how long people are waiting for their initial state
#pension
payments.
"This information is only available at disproportionate cost to The Department for Work & Pensions."
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Just heard from
@paullewismoney
that the DWP pension change line - 0800 731 0469 - now has a specific menu option for underpaid state pension inquiries, which is a big improvement (and should reduce the number of calls I'm getting!)
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Government wins Care vote by 26 - narrow majority may embolden House of Lords to keep up the pressure
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All credit here to
@thisismoney
for pursuing this sad case - the family of the lady who died will now get the full pension she should have received, after a change of heart by DWP, which will pay for a fitting memorial
Victory for bereaved family of woman wrongly denied state pension for two years, as DWP belatedly hikes payout to her husband to £12,500
@stevewebb1
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BREAKING: This one is a shocker. HMRC have just admitted in writing that they *know* taxpayers are 'forgetting' to declare pension contributions above the annual limit on their tax return. This must mean millions of pounds in tax bills are coming:
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Great write-up here from
@JosephineCumbo
of the widening under-paid state pension issue. In 2021 the DWP are still arguing that sending a form to a husband so that his wife could claim was good enough - really
@GuyOpperman
?
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We’ve identified a new group of women on tiny pensions (often c £1 pw) who may be missed by the DWP review and who could get huge lump sums (back before 2008) - but only if they apply
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Delighted to announce that, building on the excellent foundations laid this year by Michelle Cracknell
@mac29_09
, we have appointed Sarah Pennells
@Savvy_Woman
as new Head of Financial Capability and Guidance
@RoyalLondon
- a crucial role going forward
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Delighted to have been asked to join
@BBCWomansHour
on Monday to talk about women's underpaid state pensions - many women are missing out on the correct figure and DWP won't be contacting all of them
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In the debate over setting benefit rates for next year, for me a key point to bear in mind is that this would be a *second* real-terms cut for the poorest people in the land. This year's rise was just 3.1% compared with 9% inflation, whereas average earnings was above inflation.
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ONS figures today confirm crucial May-July average earnings growth figure at 8.5%. If govt. keep their manifesto commitment to the pensions triple lock, that's the number they will have to use.
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If a doctor earns £112,000 and pays pension at 14.5%, that’s £16,240 gross. 40% of that cost (£6496) is covered by tax relief. If govt. goes to 20%, presumably docs lose half of this or £3248. Given pledge to ‘fix’ NHS pension issues, might not be well received?
@goldstone_tony
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Repeated cuts to NI rates with no changes to pensions highlight the fact that the National Insurance Fund is a complete work of fiction!
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This one hasn't had the attention it deserves. What age did you tell your pension provider you wanted to retire when you started your pension? If you told them 60, and will now work to 65, the pension may be cautiously invested for too long
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