My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Trenchard, particularly as he discussed the unveiling of the statue of his grandfather. We in Uxbridge regard ourselves very much as an RAF town, so I wish him well for that event.
When I put my name down to speak in this short and important debate, little did I realise that I would be fortunate enough to be able to listen to two eloquent and informed maiden speeches from esteemed colleagues from the other place. Sometimes it is an advantage to be low down the speakers’ list. Proceedings in our House will be massively enhanced by these two parliamentary greats.
I was always impressed by the contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart of Edgbaston, and I was not disappointed today. I know that she represented this country in fencing, so I advise noble Lords not to mess with this particular lady.
The noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead, is one of those people who always makes me feel completely inadequate whenever he speaks, but he also puts into action his words and his incredible thinking. It has been mentioned that the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy was one of his ideas, and that is just an example of his versatility. I am looking forward to working with him on many common interests, but not least on modern slavery. To be a member of his triumvirate of inquiry into modern slavery, albeit a rather junior one, together with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was a seminal moment for me.
This Bill is to be welcomed. Ensuring that those who have paid all their lives for a pension should be given a fair basic income is something that I hope we can all subscribe to, and that is certainly what I have heard so far today. I am pleased to support this measure.
Today is one of those occasions when I very much regret that I am not speaking to your Lordships in person. The reason for that is that it is difficult to convey while seated in my home my passion for a cause that I feel strongly about, and an injustice against our fellow citizens that can be righted within this simple measure. The Minister may well know what is coming, as I wrote to the Pensions Minister, Guy Opperman, last week, outlining my intention to raise this issue, and hopefully to table an amendment in Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has already raised it, as have my noble friends Lady Altmann and Lord Trenchard, but I make no apology for continuing the theme. This is the issue of frozen pensions for nearly half a million UK pensioners living abroad. Across the world, hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens, British state pensioners, are being discriminated against simply because they chose to retire to the “wrong” country.
There are 120 countries throughout the world where UK pensioners receive only the amount that was the pension at the time of their leaving the country. Eighteen of those countries have 1,000 or more affected pensioners.
This is not a new issue, and it has been rattling around Governments of all persuasions for many years. A whole series of Pensions Ministers, perhaps even the noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead, when he held the position, have had the same brief from the department. I am sure that whenever the Minister’s civil servants hear of anyone raising this, they simply go to the file marked “usual issues”, blow off some dust, and pull out the identical brief. I know the arguments behind the answers to this injustice; I have heard them many times. Many Members of the other place and your Lordships’ House have raised this issue over the years. Notably, in a passionate and eloquent speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, raised it recently in a debate about the Commonwealth.
We will not cease raising the issue until this wrong is righted, but just in case it is needed, let me repeat the situation. All British pensioners who have made national insurance contributions during their working lives are entitled to a British state pension, regardless of where they choose to live. Crucially, however, 4% of those recipients are denied their full pension because of an illogical government policy which prevents their pensions being uprated in line with inflation. The UK state pension is payable overseas but is uprated only if the pensioner resides in the European Economic Area or a country with which the UK has a reciprocal agreement which legally requires uprating. Otherwise, the state pension is frozen at the level it was on the date the pensioner left the UK or first drew their pension. Falling in real value year on year, this plunges hundreds of thousands of pensioners into poverty, including thousands of UK veterans. They include people such as 95 year-old World War II veteran Anne Puckridge, who served in all three Armed Forces and who receives a meagre £72.50 per week of the £134.25-per-week state pension she should rightfully have. This is all because she moved to Canada—a Commonwealth country—at the age of 76, to be closer to her family. It also includes another wonderful lady, whose case I have raised before in your Lordships’ House, Monica Phillips, who emigrated to the UK in 1959 as part of the Windrush generation. She worked in the UK for 37 years and was a devoted public servant. In 1996, Monica returned to Antigua to look after her ailing mother, and as a result her pension was frozen at £74.11 per week. The arbitrary nature of this policy is illustrated by the fact that Monica’s sister, who remained in Leicester, receives a full uprated pension.
Perhaps there is a popular misconception that those retiring overseas are all wealthy, but the fact is that there are many who are suffering pensioner poverty. The Government will trot out that they now make people aware that their pensions will be frozen when they leave, but many who retired years ago maintain that this was never mentioned. Of course, many feel that they still have no option but to go abroad regardless because of their family commitments. So why do I hope that the time to rectify this blot on the good name of the UK is now? In the withdrawal agreement Act, passed in January 2020, the Government rightly committed to continuing to uprate the pensions of UK pensioners who moved to the EU before 2021 in line with inflation. Surely it is time to treat all our pensioners equally,
regardless of where they reside. If the concept of reciprocity is still so much an idée fixe in our Government’s mindset, then perhaps we should now broach this in every trade deal we are striving to conclude, especially with our Commonwealth partners. That is also true of our oversea territories, as it is only Bermuda and Gibraltar which receive uprating.
We have heard about the situation which the pandemic has created. Let me remind the Government that this is worldwide. If it is about cost, I will not mention how we have managed to find billions when we need to. There is, however, a matter of raw politics: in February 2018, the Government restated their commitment to ending the current 15-year time limit for British expats registering as overseas electors. Perhaps that, combined with other factors, means that UK citizens will be eligible to receive their proper pension, as we want.
I pay tribute to those who have worked tirelessly to raise this issue, and particularly to the International Consortium of British Pensioners and stalwart campaigners such as John Duffy and Jim Tilley. The latter was a good Uxbridge man before he left for Australia. I am not expecting anything to happen today, but I can assure those many UK pensioners living around the world who contributed to this country that I and others will continue to fight for justice and restore the country’s reputation for fair play.
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