State Pensions: UK Expatriates — House of Commons, 2017-04-20
Topic: Social Welfare
Roger James Gale (Conservative, Centre-right): We shall await the Minister’s response with great interest. I am grateful to my hon. Friend A former constituent of mine, and a friend, now living in South Africa, wrote to me to say, "I have been looking after my wife since her stroke and increased dementia, plus incontinence now, for over a year. Reviewing the situation with our daughter, my wife is slowly going downhill. I am heading that way, too. I am worn out. To help with catering and finance, we are now on to Meals-on-Wheels for four days a week and are shortly to arrange five day or even five and a half day care support. Right now, our medical aid—insurance—takes half our combined basic OAP pension and the new care plan will certainly take the other half. Our daughter looks after our finances and generously helps and tops up when needed." That is what my former constituent, a friend, is now reduced to. Sadly, I learned only this morning that his wife died last week, leaving him not only in penury but, apart from the care and affection of his daughter, alone Bernard Jackson, 91 years old, has returned to the United Kingdom from Canada and says: "I was brought up to believe that Britain was a fair country. It’s a disgrace, it has to end, it’s terrible to meet pensioners over here who say they have to come back to Britain because they can’t manage." Joe Lewis, 90 years old, who lives in Canada and has recently lost his wife, will be moving back to the United Kingdom as he can no longer cope with his frozen pension. After suffering a severe fall, Joe is increasingly struggling to afford living and medical costs. The only way he can make ends meet is to use up all his savings. Joe Lewis, a nonagenarian, says: "All I want is my full state pension which I have paid into my entire life". Here is another anomaly: any returnee, including those visiting the UK for a couple of weeks to see family on holiday, is entitled to claim their full uprated pension for that period Of course, cometh Brexit, cometh another issue that will have to be addressed. The 492,000 British pensioners living in the 27 European Union member states and EFTA countries are protected by the social security provisions of the EU single market, but what will happen to their pensions when we leave the EU? A resident in France wrote to me to say: "I have been a ‘victim’ of a frozen pension for the past 15 years having lived in Zimbabwe for 45 years and being forced to move to a EU country in order to get my pension... During my working life, I continued to pay Class 3 NI contributions to safeguard my UK pension and it was only when I reached age 65 that I found out that my pension would no longer be indexed, and this has cost me many thousands of lost pounds over a period of 15 years. Now the same issue is rearing its head because of Brexit." Will there be 27 different reciprocal agreements or one blanket agreement? Will former EU pensioners find their pensions frozen like those in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Indian subcontinent, Montserrat and other countries? Surely now, in the light of Brexit, is the time at least to start to put all expat UK pensioners who have paid their dues on an equal footing I return to the resident in Thailand who said that he "would not ask for any back payment… I would just be happy to feel that in the future I will have that little extra security of a few extra pounds to sustain me in the last years of my life." Successive Governments, plucking figures out of the sky, have suggested that uprating overseas pensions would cost billions. In fact, the proposal that the all-party group supports, which goes nowhere near as far as the proposal that some would like and that justice probably dictates, is to uprate payments at the 2.5% from which UK-based recipients will benefit this year. That will cost not billions, but just £33 million. After five years, the budgetary impact will be £158 million. To set that in context, the triple lock costs the Government an extra £2 billion each year In the great scheme of Government expenditure, £158 million is small change—small change to settle a debt of honour, with no threat of legal challenge in respect of potential retrospective claims. That, surely, is a bill that, in the interests of a society that is fair for all, the Government cannot afford not to pay.