Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people have (a) made additional payments to increase the number of qualifying years of National Insurance contributions they require to claim the full state pension and (b) by making such payments have (i) exceeded the 35 years required to claim that pension and (ii) been refunded for making overpayments.

The requested information relating to the payment of voluntary Class 3 National Insurance contributions is not readily available.

People with no National Insurance record before the introduction of the new State Pension on 6 April 2016 will need 35 qualifying years to get the full amount of new State Pension, when they reach State Pension age.

For people with an existing National Insurance record before this date, transitional arrangements apply and their existing National Insurance (NI) record to 6 April 2016 is taken into account. (It is therefore not the case that 35 years of National Insurance will result in the full rate of the new State Pension for these people; in these cases there is usually not a direct relationship between the number of years of National Insurance contributions and the amount of State Pension someone receives.)

People who qualify will receive at least as much from the new State Pension as they would have done from the old system, based on their NI record to 6 April 2018;

Many people will be able to build a higher State Pension amount than they previously could have done by adding further qualifying years until they either reach the full rate of new State Pension, or their State Pension age whichever comes first