Nearly half a million pensioners are set to miss out on a £470 increase to their state pension due to a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) rule. From April, the state pension will increase by 4.1% thanks to the triple lock – but thousands of people will not see extra money in their pension pot due to the ‘frozen pensions policy’.
The policy denies those living abroad from being entitled to an increase to their pension and will affect approximately 453,000 UK State Pensioners as campaigners call on Labour to reverse the rule. The government has been non-committal on the issue which would cost around £4.5bn over five years if the policy was revoked. With the majority of those set to miss out living in commonwealth countries, there is growing diplomatic pressure for the policy to be changed. A total of 84% of UK pensioners residing abroad live in Canada, Australia or New Zealand.
Around 100,000 UK pensioners reside in Canada and it is hoped that the election of the former Governer of the Bank of England Mark Carney as Prime Minister could soften Labour’s stance on the matter.
Edwina Melville-Grey, Chair of End Frozen Pensions Canada, said: “We don’t imagine for a moment that Mr Carney will be reliant on whatever UK state pension he might be entitled to.
“However, we know for sure that many thousands of the affected UK state pensioners living in affected countries, including those in Canada, see their UK state pension as a vital lifeline helping them through arduous times.
“We know that he has many immense challenges on his desk right now and wish him well in meeting those. But we hope he will be able, when the time is right, to meet with our lead campaigner on this issue, 100-year-old Anne Puckridge. Her situation embodies the injustice of this scandal.”
John Duguid, Chair of End Frozen Pensions International, said: “Simply more needs to be done to address the ‘frozen’ pensions policy in diplomatic settings, and the election of Mark Carney as Canada’s Prime Minister paints the perfect opportunity to do so.”
There have regularly been concerted efforts to force successive governments to repeal the policy, most recently when more than 56,000 expats signed a petition to lift the freeze.
The government’s official response at the time said: “The Government has no plans to change the policy on up-rating UK state pensions overseas; the policy is longstanding and has been supported by successive Governments for over 70 years.”
In October last year, a motion was tabled in parliament calling for the scale of the injustice to be acknowledged as well as for the government to “index all overseas state pensions equally on a going-forward basis”.
The motion which has so far been signed by 32 MPs, also called for the Prime Minister Keir Starmer to meet a Second World War veteran who is travelling from Canada to the UK to raise the issue.
