Pension setback for women

Campaigners and female MPs have expressed their disappointment after the government scrapped plans to help top up the pension pots of many UK women.

Rejection of a scheme to allow women to bulk out their state pensions by buying up National Insurance (NI) contributions, however, was defended by pensions minister Lord McKenzie who argued it could be "potentially too expensive".

But this has come as little comfort to women of pensionable age who took time out from work to raise a family or care for relatives and campaigners such as Help the Aged.

Anne Begg, a Labour member of the work and pensions select committee said a number of her female backbench colleagues were "disappointed" at the decision made yesterday.

She told the BBC she had expected the government would find a solution.

Ms Begg added: "I think a certain number of my female colleagues will be very disappointed because we were keen to make sure this piece of legislation started to address some of the inequalities women already face in the pension system.

"We want to make sure women qualify as soon as possible for the basic state pension and to make that qualification as easy as possible we take into account the caring responsibilities that women have."

But Lord McKenzie, also speaking to the BBC yesterday, said the idea could not be targeted sufficiently without incurring huge costs.

He added: "This proposal does nothing to help the poorest women who are close to retirement and don't know whether they are... going to end up on pension credit.

"If they are it would be quite wrong to encourage those people to buy additional contributions to increase their basic state pension because they would lose that pound for pound."