State Pensions: UK Expatriates — House of Commons, 2017-04-20
Topic: Labor
Peter James Bottomley (Conservative, Centre-right): The House should thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) and the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) for the way in which they have spoken, and we look forward to the contribution from the Scottish National party. If my friend the Minister does not mind, I will talk through him, because he will not be authorised to make the kind of commitment that this House is asking for. The questions we have to address are: is what is going on fair? Is it logical? Is it right? The answer to each of those is no, and I thank John Markham and the International Consortium of British Pensioners for the briefing they sent, which points out that the situation is grossly unfair, completely illogical and morally wrong To illustrate the point, were I to have retired overseas in the "wrong" place, in the seven years since I could have taken the state pension, I would have lost £5,000. I plan to be re-elected; in five years’ time—we may have an election then—the loss would be £13,000. Clearly, I can afford it, as when I retire I shall have a second pension. It will come from the state, but any increases in it will not be determined by whether I live in one part of the West Indies or another. Just to make sure that the Minister is paying attention, perhaps he would like to tell us in which of the areas represented by the West Indies cricket team people would get increases. If I were to retire to the United States part of the West Indies, would I get an increase? Yes. If I were to retire to the Dutch part of the West Indies, would I get an increase in my state pension? Yes. If we went through some of the independent countries, we would hear the Minister tell us about the difference between Guyana and Barbados The point has been made about the lack of a parallel between Canada and the United States. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet asked, what is the reason for the difference in position in Thailand and the Philippines, except total chance? The point about this House is not to leave things to total chance. Old age pensions were introduced in 1906, or thereabouts, by a combination of Lloyd George and Winston Churchill to make sure that people were not left struggling in their old age. Ministers may have been briefed to say that there is social security in some countries, but not in many others—Zimbabwe, which has been mentioned, perhaps being one of the worst examples. People who were asked by this country to stay on during Ian Smith’s illegal declaration of independence now find themselves in penury. That is made far worse by the freezing of their state pension The number of overseas pensioners who are registered to vote has doubled since the last election, and it could double again and again. If instead of there being 400 of these people for each constituency, there were 800 or 1,600, people might start paying more attention more widely, but the arguments for unfreezing to deal with this injustice should not be about numbers of votes; they should be about whether unfreezing is right or wrong. Let us suppose that at the moment four pensioners in every 100 are affected, and the issue affects a third of their state pension. We can clearly cope with the sum involved. We will in any case be coping with a growing number of pensioners—give or take, depending on the lifting of the state pension age. When we were considering decimalisation in the early 1970s, somebody said, "This will confuse the elderly. Let’s wait until they are all dead." The fact is that the situation for overseas pensioners will get worse until we can establish a fair principle right across the board I do not want to repeat all the speeches I have made in the past, but briefly and clearly, we have to ask Ministers: when will the time come when a Minister of a Conservative, Labour or coalition Government of any kind can stand up and say that they will put before Parliament, or accept from Parliament, proposals that are fair, logical and right?