Regime is leaving thousands of retired British expats under serious financial strain
The Australian and Canadian governments have told the UK they are willing to work together to end the ‘frozen’ pension policy.
They have been calling on the UK government to act on the issue for several years.
The problem arises when a British national receiving the state pension relocates overseas and, if the country they are moving to doesn’t have a reciprocal agreement with the UK, their pension is ‘frozen’ at the time of their departure.
This means they will not see their pension uprated every year in line with their counterparts in the UK.
Sir Roger Gale, the Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Frozen British Pensions, was particularly critical of the UK government s efforts: Successive governments of differing political persuasions have sheltered behind the assertion that we can only uprate pensions for UK citizens living overseas in countries with which we have a reciprocal agreement. That is quite simply factually and morally wrong.
“As the Chairman of the APPG on Frozen Pensions I regard it as a disgrace and a matter of national shame that the United Kingdom has for so long denied to elderly citizens, very many of whom have proudly served our country in the Armed Forces or the Civil Service, the funds that they need to live on in old age and, sadly, sometimes in ill-health. It is past time for this injustice to be addressed and the wrong of decades righted.”
That means some expats who retired when the basic rate was £67.50 a week in 2000 still get that, rather than the £134.25 a week now received by others who retired that year.
However, it was announced this year that British expats in the European Union will continue to get annual increases in the state pension, plus healthcare rights, as long as they moved there before the end of 2020.
Why are state pensions frozen for some expats?
Whether an expat s pension is frozen or not depends entirely on where you move to, because the Government has struck individual deals with some countries but left around 150 others out in the cold.