I have been asked to respond to this question from a reader of a national daily.

This is a question that an awful lot of people living abroad with rights to the British State Pension will be asking themselves and I’ve been asking about it to.

I’m sorry but I can give you no expectation that the Labour Government will be any more generous on this matter than its predecessors. While no civil servant I spoke to ruled out the possibility of rules changing, no one would give you any hope and the Labour party manifesto is silent on this matter.

The Government says that if you return to the UK or go to live in a country where the UK does pay state pension increases to UK ex-pats, you can have increases for the time you are resident at your new location. But don’t expect to be fully reinstated to get the pension rises your UK peers got.

Missing a pay rise is never nice, but missing one when everyone else gets one is not nice at all. But many people have been missing out on pay rises from the state pension over the past 40 years!

If as a woman you had emigrated to Australia as a state pensioner in 1984 you could be celebrating your 100th birthday this year on a state pension of £34.05 per week. By comparison, if you had stayed in the UK, your old style basic state pension would have been paying you £57.60 in 1994, £79.60 by 2004, £113.10 by 2014 and £169.50 today. The triple lock suggests that the rate of real growth in income will not slacken.

The principle behind  the Government’s policy of freezing state pensions was established over 70 years ago and means that in extreme cases expats can be getting paid less than a quarter of the pension they’d have got if they’d stayed put.

Whether you get state pension increases (lately with the triple-lock) or not, depends on a tax-treaty lottery. Some countries, including   the USA  and Switzerland have treaties, some don’t. You can see the details on this Government website

Government is regularly asked to change the rules, most recently in 2023. Last year more than 56,000 expats signed a petition to lift the freeze.

The Government issued a formal response recognising that as of March 2022, there were around 480,000 recipients of the UK State Pension living overseas do not get State Pension increases – 84 per cent of those live in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

It quoted the cost of paying ex-pat pension increases between 2023 and 2028 at over £4.5bn. In a research briefing to MPs on the subject , it stated

The Government has no plans to change the policy on up-rating UK State Pensions overseas; the policy is longstanding and has been supported by successive Governments for over 70 years.

The briefing speculates that this is because of cost-constraints and a prioritisation of UK pensioners. But why treaties have been reached with the United States and not the Commonwealth countries isn’t clear. This seems bonkers to most expats and indeed many MPs across parties have argued for reform.

Pensioners do not get the benefit of a state pension for nothing. Pension credits are earned either by earning and paying national insurance or because someone cannot earn for good reason. What is more, most pensioners who retire abroad have to rely on overseas medical facilities the cost of which is not charged  back to the NHS.

So while ex-pat pensioners are getting a second class deal in terms of their state pension, they can be getting zero value-for-money from the NHS.

Government may argue that they publish the rules and have done so for decades, some cynical commentators suggest that the rules don’t change because ex-pats rarely vote.

You don’t sound like the kind to let this lie, I would suggest that you take the matter up with the new Pensions Minister , Emma Reynolds.

This article is now appearing in the Mail. Thanks Tanya Jefferies

Will Labour end ‘unfairness’ of frozen state pensions for expats? Money expert @henryhtapper gives his verdict https://t.co/L5GgffWyb1

— This is Money (@thisismoney) July 17, 2024