This is the stark choice facing half a million British pensioners abroad (outside Europe and the US) whose UK state pensions are currently frozen due to a flawed policy decision taken just after the Second World War and which no government has since had the courage to address.
On 4th December the Home Secretary announced a five-point plan to attempt to reduce immigration into the UK. As a result, from 24th April 2024, the minimum salary requirement for people who want to bring a foreign family member or partner to the UK will more than double from £18,600 to £38,700.
There is uncertainty as to whether the new income requirement will apply to people who already have a family member in the UK when their existing visa comes up for renewal.
This will have an immense impact on families across a broad spectrum of industries from health and caregivers to education.
That is why Lib Dems Abroad have launched a petition to gather public support against yet another injustice to those of us living overseas.
Here is the link to the petition.
Please join us by signing it!
But I would like to focus on the frozen state pensioners abroad because many are already suffering extreme hardship due to rampant inflation eroding the value of their pensions, fully funded yet frozen since the time they left the UK.
While the option of restoring pensions in full by returning to the UK has always been open, that option is now effectively closed to most of those who would have a foreign partner or family member join them. Even if their pensions are restored in full, very few will have additional income at their age to meet the new income requirement.
This leaves them with the choice of remaining abroad with a frozen pension or abandoning their partner or other family member if they return to the UK and cannot satisfy the new income level.
Our only hope – consign this present government to the history books!
* Colin Bloodworth is a member of the Lib Dems Overseas Executive .
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7 Comments
The 2019 Liberal Democrat manifesto did not contain a promise to raise the state pensions for pensioners living abroad in line with increases in the state pension in the UK. Will this be rectified for the next election?
Labour did make such a commitment in 2019, but that was under Jeremy Corbyn. I doubt such a commitment will be made again under Starmer.
We have the crazy situation that pensioners in some countries receive their uprated pension, whereas in other countries the pension is frozen at the level at which the pensioner left the country. It’s an injustice that we should rectify.
Wrong headed, encouraging pensioners to leave the country is a good thing, they should be compensated for not using housing, NHS and social care by having a larger not smaller state pension
How will this “salary” threshold work for those who are already retired, and so not receiving a salary?
There are now 5.5 million Britons living abroad – almost as many people as in Scotland. We need to urgently address their policy needs.
Might pensions be a part of agreed, earned income due to the individual and so geography immune?
Might this interference with earned pay be another example of the *deep state » acting parasitically on regular citizens?
Like the bank rate?
Inthe EEA area state pension rises are applied ..
As with other countries with a social security agreement with the UK that’s reciprocated ..
The vast majority of pensioners who’ve had their pensions frozen are in Australia, Canada , New Zealand – that do not have an agreement with the UK in place ..
Those pensioners would of obviously realised that was the case . The cost of uprating is just under £1 Billion ..
The vast majority of those pensioners will have a private pension that remains unaffected… There’s plenty of pensioners in the UK that would of loved to retire abroad – but were never in a financial position to do so – having struggled in low pay manual work most of their lives …I’d rather we spent nearly a £Billion on them …