Campaigners attacked the Government yesterday after it dropped a plan to help women to boost their state pensions by buying back missed national insurance contributions.

The Government indicated in July that it would probably support a proposal allowing women to retrieve up to nine years of missed contributions, making up for years spent at home looking after children or relatives.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said that the plan would not have helped the poorest pensioners. “Poorer pensioners are likely to be better off under pension credit and would not benefit from paying voluntary contributions,” the department said. “Women claiming on their husband’s contributions would not benefit unless they were able to increase their own entitlement above 60 per cent of their spouse’s pension.”

At present people who miss making national insurance contributions can buy up to six years more, as long as they are for the immediately preceding years. The decision not to change the rules was revealed in an answer to a question in the House of Lords on Monday. Baroness Hollis of Heigham, the Labour peer and former DWP minister who campaigned for the change, was furious. “It is quite wrong that women caring for other people should go into retirement with a lower pension through arbitrary time limits.”

Help the Aged also criticised the move. “The Government has reneged on a promise to help millions of women and carers,” said Anna Pearson, the charity’s policy manager. “The decision . . . is effectively a stab in the back for women and carers.”

In July the Lords passed an amendment to the 2007 Pensions Act removing the six-year time bar and letting people buy up to nine years of backdated national insurance contributions at any time. Mike O’Brien, the Pensions Reform Minister, said at the time that the Government would use its “best endeavours to deliver the principles of the amendment”.

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