Money Box journalist Dan Whitworth urged people to check if they can claim the money.Money Box journalist Dan Whitworth urged people to check if they can claim the money.

Money Box journalist Dan Whitworth urged people to check if they can claim the money.

A BBC expert says anyone who had children from 1978-2010 could be owed £5,000. One viewer told BBC Morning Live she received a back payment of £35,000 and had her weekly pension boosted immediately.

BBC Money Box journalist Dan Whitworth urged people to check if they can claim the money. He has explained how anyone who had children in a 32-year period could be due a huge back payment due to an HMRC mix-up.

The issue is around Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP), a scheme that ran between April 1978 and April 2010. HRP was designed to protect parents and carers who were unable to build up full National Insurance contributions because they were looking after children or caring for someone who was sick or disabled.

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Mr Whitworth said: “This is specifically something to do with home responsibilities protection or HRP. And it doesn’t really matter what it’s called, too much.

“What matters is when people, mainly women, took time out of the workplace to care for children and claim child benefit, they should have had this HRP added to their national insurance records so that when they came to retire, they didn’t lose out on their state pension because they weren’t working.

“They were actually raising children, which is obviously good for everybody, right?

“But essentially, what it does is when you have HRP added to your record. It brings down the number of years you need to qualify for a full state pension.

“Now, you can get HRP. So, there are certain criteria you have to fill. So, you can get HRP if you’re claiming child benefit for under-16s.

“And this was between 1978 and 2010. So, if this is you claiming child benefit for under 16s, between 1978 and 2010, if you’re getting income support for caring for sick or disabled people, or if you are caring for a sick or disabled person who is claiming certain benefits.

“So if you meet any of those criteria that you can see on your screen now, this could be worth you claiming for this money.”