Figures published by HMRC suggest that tens of thousands of mothers with young children could face a permanently reduced state pension because of changes to the Child Benefit system introduced in 2013 for higher income couples. Those affected are families who either opted out of Child Benefit when the rules changed or who have started a new family since 2013 and decided not to claim Child Benefit in the first place. Figures show that the number of families receiving child benefit is 7.38 million compared with 7.92 million in 2012, just before the rules changed.

Forty years after the first National Insurance credits were introduced to protect the state pension rights of mothers, women are again facing greater poverty in retirement because of having children. Some mothers will have lost over £23,000 in state pension rights since 2013 because of the changes, and are not allowed to make a backdated claim for missing credits.

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