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<p /> <p>The new State Pension will be based on an individual’s own National Insurance
contributions. This reflects the fact that, in contrast to earlier generations of
women, most people of working age today are able to gain sufficient qualifying years
to qualify for a state pension in their own right.</p><p> </p><p>We have put arrangements
in place to ensure that certain women who elected to pay National Insurance contributions
at the married women and widows’ reduced rate are not affected by withdrawing access
to derived basic State Pension. Widows who qualify under these arrangements will be
able to get a pension of about the same as the basic pension they could have got in
the current scheme plus any additional State Pension they built up themselves by April
2016, if that is more than they would get under the new rules on their own contributions.</p><p>
</p><p>We are also protecting the additional State Pension (also known as SERPS or
S2P) a surviving spouse or civil partner would have been able to inherit under the
current rules, if their deceased partner had either died or reached State Pension
age before 6 April 2016. Where both members of the couple are in the new State Pension
system, the surviving member may inherit half of any “protected payment” (the amount,
if any, by which a person’s state pension valued under current rules exceeds the full
rate of the new State Pension at 2016). These arrangements will apply where the marriage
or civil partnership had begun before the new scheme starts.</p>
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