My partner is a Catalan women who has been a resident in the UK for 45 years, and is now nearly 69 and has not received a penny of pension.

We have a letter from 2015 stating that she had eight years of stamps, and pre-Brexit her four years of working in Spain would have been added to take her up over the minimum for any state pension.

When she first moved to the UK with her first husband, they soon separated and not understanding the system she allowed him to collect the child benefit and consequently did not receive credits for all the time she was raising her children.

I have lost count of the number of times we have rung the Department for Work and Pensions for help, and the number of forms filled in. We also visited the Spanish consulate in London, where my wife was treated very badly by a rude and unhelpful woman. 

In March this year we were advised to pay two years of stamps to bring her up to the minimum of 10 years. 

I did this, paying nearly £1,700 from a credit card on the understanding she would start getting a small pension within eight weeks. 

This did not happen and having recently consulted the HMRC website and despite having paid two extra years, it only credits her with nine years stamps. 

We are at the end of our tether and anything you could do to help or advise us would be very much appreciated.

Incidentally, she has not applied for pension credit as she needs to regularly visit her 95 year old mother.

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Steve Webb replies: I was sorry to read that your partner has had such difficulties in getting her state pension sorted out. 

Although things can be more complicated and take longer where someone has worked in more than one country, it should not have taken nearly three years without a resolution.

The first key rule for people to be aware of is that you need 10 years of National Insurance contributions (or credits) to be entitled to any UK state pension.

At first glance, someone with just 8 years of contributions would get nothing.

However, there are two potential ways round this problem.

The first is for the UK government to take account of the years that your partner worked in Spain. 

In principle, the four years of working in an EU country should be added to the eight years of contributing in the UK, and this is enough to satisfy the ‘ten year rule’.

This has been the practice for many years and it remains the case notwithstanding the UK’s exit from the European Union.

Your partner’s UK state pension would only be paid on the basis of UK contributions – at a rate of 8/35 of the full rate, given the target of 35 years for a full pension – but the overseas contributions would be getting you over the separate 10 year hurdle.

It is still not clear why this did not happen in your partner’s case.

I see that because your partner had worked in Spain she was advised that she should also apply for a pension from the Spanish government. 

This is done via the UK’s ‘International Pension Centre’, though as it turned out she did not satisfy the rules to receive a Spanish state pension.

The other way round this problem is simply to do what you did and pay voluntary contributions. 

I see that you did this just before the 6 April deadline, which allowed you to go back to gaps all the way back to 2006/07. 

You bought two years which – regardless of the Spanish contributions – should have brought your partner up to 10 years, and earned her a pension of 10/35 of the full rate.

Although for some reason the NI record which you shared with me did indeed show just nine qualifying years, I have been in touch with DWP and they confirmed that they are working on the basis of 10 years – the original eight years in the UK plus the two voluntary years you have just paid.

I’m pleased to say that following my intervention DWP acted swiftly and you have now been told that your partner will be getting a state pension of over £3,000 per year as well as arrears back to when she reached pension age. 

You have told me that "You were the first person to take any real notice of our situation!" so I’m pleased I was able to help.

I asked DWP for comment and a spokesperson said: 'We apologise for the delay in this payment. [Your reader] has since been awarded a backdated payment and will receive her regular state pension payment going forward.'

In passing, it’s worth saying that for those who are just a few years short of getting any state pension at all, voluntary contributions of the sort that you made can be especially attractive.

To give an extreme example, someone who had nine years of UK contributions (and no other contributions) would have zero state pension entitlement. 

Buying just one extra year via Class 3 NI contributions – at a current cost of £923 (or less for some older years) – would generate a state pension of 10/35 of the full rate. This would be worth around £3,420 per year.

The payback period for one year of voluntary contributions in this situation could be just a few months and is well worth considering for those who are just short of the 10-year threshold.

In addition, in some circumstances you might be able to buy back missing years at the lower ‘Class 2’ rate, and this could be even better value.

The main thing to beware is that if you would otherwise be on a benefit such as pension credit, increasing your state pension could result in a benefit reduction and could wipe out any improvement overall.