Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, with reference to the Answer of 29 October 2013, Official Report, column 411W, on Zimbabwe: pension payments, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that British nationals in Zimbabwe receive their pensions.

We continue to pursue a resolution to this issue. I have personally written to both Finance Minister Chinamasa and the responsible Minister for Pensions, Minister Goche. I also raised the issue during a meeting with the Zimbabwean Ambassador in London on 30 June. We are in regular contact with the Director of Pensions, with whom officials last met on 12 June. Our Ambassador regularly raises the issue with interlocutors, including most recently on 4 June with the Finance Minister Chinamasa. She also wrote to the Zimbabwe Civil Service Commission in December 2013; we await a response. We remain in regular contact with the interested parties, including the Overseas Service Pensioners Association (OSPA) and the Federal Pensioners Association in Harare.