Warning for widows and widowers losing thousands due to state ­pension blunders

WIDOWS and widowers are losing thousands of pounds due to state pension ­blunders, a former minister is warning.

Sir Steve Webb says they are being denied payouts they should have inherited from their late partners.

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In two of the four cases ­uncovered by the former Lib Dem minister, the underpayments were more than £2,000 a year.

Sir Steve, now a partner at financial consultancy Lane Clark & Peacock, wants others who may have been shortchanged to come forward.

He said: “These cases may well be the tip of an iceberg.”

Since 2021, the Department for Work and Pensions has run a major project to fix known state pension errors.

But it has missed problems with widows and widowers whose partners died, or reached pension age, before April 6, 2016 — when the system was reformed.

Sir Steve added: “Having had to spend years checking hundreds of thousands of historic state pension calculations for errors, you would hope that DWP would be making sure that new claims are handled correctly.

But we have found worrying evidence that this is not the case.”