Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much the Government is spending on public awareness campaigns to inform people about the opportunity to buy back missing National Insurance years before the 5 April 2025 deadline.

Since April 2024, approximately 37,000 customers have topped up more than 68,000 years and £35 million has been paid via HMRC’s digital services.

From October 2024 we have been running a significant communications campaign to raise awareness of the opportunity for customers to buy back missing National Insurance years, ahead of the 5 April 2025 deadline.

Activity has included a wide range of direct communications, messages on our telephony lines, digital platforms, stakeholder engagement, and press/social media to reach our target audience in a fully integrated way. There have been over 20,000 views of HMRC’s YouTube video in 5 months. Stakeholder resource packs have been sent out via FCDO and British Embassies to support customers who may have lived and worked abroad and through Pension providers.

HMRC has also provided information bulletins directly to more than 2 million employers and other representative organisations.

Ahead of the deadline we will step this up further to remind customers that there are only 2 months left to make any additional contributions.

During this period and where appropriate we will supplement this extensive activity with strategic and targeted paid-for activity to speak to elements of the audience who may not have been reached. It is not yet possible to provide a final cost for this activity, but all costs involved in the campaign will be published as part of the regular transparency reports on gov.uk