Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment he has made of the equitability between married and unmarried bereaved couples' ability to access their deceased partner's pension.

In defined benefit occupational pension schemes, there are no statutory requirements for pension schemes to provide any survivor benefits unless the scheme was contracted out of the additional State Pension. Surviving partners of members do not automatically receive benefits when the member dies. These survivor benefits are a matter for the scheme rules and the sponsoring employer, subject to HMRC tax restrictions. Some schemes may choose to provide survivor benefits for those who are not in a legal partnership, but they are not required to. Where a scheme was contracted out, the pension must include a minimum level of benefits for certain widows, widowers and surviving civil partners, reflecting the provisions in the additional State Pension.

The new State Pension, applicable to those who reach State Pension age from 6 April 2016, is based on an individual’s own National Insurance contributions only, although there are transitional rules that mean an individual can inherit State Pension in some circumstances, where there was a legal marriage or civil partnership before 6 April 2016.