Imagine you took out a retirement plan in your twenties with a private insurance company in order to qualify for an inflation-protected pension. You then discover in horror on retirement, after paying your contributions in full, that if you have moved overseas the pension provider refuses to uprate your pension each year unless you have moved to a ‘qualifying’ country.
Could that really happen?
Very unlikely in the private sector, but this is the reality for over half a million UK state pensioners, including some 100,000 war veterans. A recent survey showed that 50% of ‘frozen’ pensioners are receiving £65 a week or less, compared to the current basic pension of £134.25 a week.
What determines whether your pension will be uprated or not? It comes down to whether the country concerned has a ‘reciprocal agreement’ with the UK, an excuse which is illogical and unfair.
Qualifying countries include the USA, Europe (at the moment) and most British Overseas Territories. ‘Frozen’ countries include Australia, Canada, South Africa and most of Asia. To illustrate the absurdity of the policy, pensioners in the US Virgin Islands are uprated annually whilst those in the British Virgin Islands are ‘frozen’.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Burnham's betrayal on political funding
The two skills politics forgets to teach
Sorry seems to be the hardest word
A day out at the football...
Listen to Dr Francis Young on the history of fairies
Neil Sandison 
Carl Pierce 
Christopher Burden 
Mick Taylor 