Conservative MP Sir Peter Bottomley has criticised a policy which will lead to half a million people missing out on the state pension triple lock boost.
Bottomley, the longest serving continuous member of Parliament in the House of Commons, attacked the Government’s handling of pensions, saying it “hasn’t even got a strategy”.
The state pension is expected to rise by 10.1 per cent from April, which will be in live with the CPI inflation figure from September 2022. That rise, however, is not guaranteed, and usually is linked to the person’s place of residence.
Conservative MP Sir Peter Bottomley
Richard Townshend
The triple lock boost only applies to UK residents within the UK, European Economic Area (EEA), Gibraltar, Switzerland and countries with a social security agreement with the UK – with the exception of Canada and New Zealand.
Expats living elsewhere will have their state pension frozen at the point that it was when they decided to leave an eligible country – frustrating those citizens who feel they are not receiving a fair deal.
Speaking on the debate in the House of Commons, Sir Peter Bottomley said: “When we come to the pensions uprating, I regret the Government hasn’t even got a strategy, let alone decided to change the appalling decision that half our overseas pensioners will not get increases.
“Legal sophistry is not good enough. We ought to have a plan or a strategy to change that.
“I hope that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will talk to her colleagues and ask them to talk to me and to my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) about that.”
Leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mourdant, acknowledged his comments.
The cost-of-living crisis is a global problem, with those UK citizens who have retired and moved away finding their frozen state pension not being enough to live on.
Currently there are an estimated 500,000 UK citizens affected worldwide, with some feeling that the decision to freeze state pensions in certain countries being discriminatory.
The End Frozen Pensions Campaign group has called out the government, saying the pension problem is an “arbitrary postcode lottery.”
Joe Giddens
On their website they say: “Some have been forced to return to the UK to afford their own care.
“Those who return are left with the daunting prospect of an expensive and upsetting upheaval to the UK in their old age and put further strain on the NHS and social care system at a time when it is already struggling.”
In a statement, the Depart for Work and Pensions say: “The Government’s policy on the uprating of the UK state pension for recipients living overseas is a longstanding one of more than 70 years and we continue to uprate state pensions overseas where there is a legal requirement to do so.
“We understand that people move abroad for many reasons and that this can impact on their finances.
“There is information on GOV.UK about what the effect of going abroad will be on entitlement to the UK state pension."
