The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has “no plans” to raise frozen state pension payments for 500,000 Britons living abroad, a Government minister has confirmed.
Pensions minister Paul Maynard told MPs the Government will not be introducing a “change to its longstanding policy”.
Pensioners who retire overseas in certain countries, including Canada and New Zealand, have their payments frozen at the rate they were paid when they left the UK.
An estimated 500,000 older Britons do not receive the full state pension entitlement they would have otherwise received if they had stayed in Britain or retired in countries which qualify for the uprating.
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State pension payments are frozen for thousands of Britons living abroad
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During a debate on UK residents living overseas last week, Rob Roberts MP urged the minister to consider uprating state pension payments for expats as a “matter of fairness”.
Mr Roberts said “Following our withdrawal from the EU, we are rightly able to move closer with our partners in the Commonwealth and one of the ways we can do that would be to confirm that all British citizens that live in the Commonwealth should be entitled to the appropriate uprating of their state pension as if they were still in the UK, it would seem a matter of simple fairness.
“Will the minister meet with me to discuss the practicalities of making that happen and restore some much needed common sense to a needlessly complicated situation?”
However, Mr Maynard confirmed that there was “no plan” by the Government to pursue this policy change for the time being.
He responded: “The UK government continues to uprate state pensions where there is a legal requirement to do so and has no plans to change its longstanding policy or enter into any new reciprocal social security agreements.
“According to the latest estimate, based on data from March 2022, uprating the state pension where we do not currently do so would cost about £0.9billionn a year if all UK state pensions in payment were increased to current UK levels.”
The fight to uprate state pension payments has received public support with a parliamentary petition being launched by Robert Lloyd Crutchlow.
On the website, the petition reads: “Approximately 500,000 of 1.2 million state pension recipients living abroad do not receive increases to their state pension in the same way as other state pension recipients.
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Campaigners have called for the state pension to rise in line with the triple lock for affected expats
GETTY“We want the state pensions of these individuals to be increased to current rates, and to receive annual increases in future.”
As of today, the petition has not yet reached 5,000 signatures and needs 10,000 for it to be debated in parliament.
Among those affected by the frozen state pension policy is World War II veteran Anne Puckridge, 99, who estimates she is £46,000 worse-off due to the policy.
GB News has contacted the DWP for comment.