Treasury Minister Alfred Cannan has rejected a call to fast-track pension forecasts for those who are closer to retirement age.

He said the aim was to reply with a forecast within five weeks of a request.

But he added: ’In terms of fast-tracking individuals, it would not be fair to prioritise one group over another and we will deal with such queries as they arrive and in the order that they arrive.’

Mr Cannan was responding to a call from Jason Moorhouse (Arbory, Castletown and Malew) in the House of Keys on Tuesday. Mr Moorhouse said not all forecasts were being delivered within the target time.

’Would it be possible to fast-track the individuals who are less than two years away from their state retirement age?’ he asked.

Mr Moorhouse added said there were further concerns for people who might be entitled to UK top-ups for their Manx pension, because they could not proceed on that without a Manx forecast. Some were worried about reports of an April 2019 deadline for the UK ’accepting back payments of National Insurance contributions’.

But Mr Cannan said that deadline was incorrect and it was actually 2023.

He reiterated there would be no prioritisation of forecast requests.

’We will deal with them as they come in,’ said Mr Cannan. ’If the member has specific individual cases who believe, for whatever reason, there is a clear requirement for specific urgency or if they have not received information back in good time, then if he lets me know of those individual cases I will consider them on their merits.’