Pensions: British Pensioners Overseas

Baroness Turner of Camden Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I regret I cannot give my noble friend any comfort. Full uprating to today’s levels would cost us more than £0.5 billion and while partial uprating—in other words, just starting to move current levels of pensions up by the increases—would start off being much less than that, those costs would rise in the medium term to a level similar to the full uprating.

[Baroness Turner of Camden (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not really rather unfair? I have a relative who retired to South Africa, where there is no reciprocal agreement. He is very upset that he paid the appropriate contributions before leaving this country and his pension will nevertheless be frozen. Should not people who have made some contribution at least have some gesture from the Government in favour of fairness, which is, apparently, not available at the moment?