Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Lord Randall of Uxbridge Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Trenchard, particularly as he discussed the unveiling of the statue of his grandfather. We in Uxbridge regard ourselves very much as an RAF town, so I wish him well for that event.

When I put my name down to speak in this short and important debate, little did I realise that I would be fortunate enough to be able to listen to two eloquent and informed maiden speeches from esteemed colleagues from the other place. Sometimes it is an advantage to be low down the speakers’ list. Proceedings in our House will be massively enhanced by these two parliamentary greats.

I was always impressed by the contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart of Edgbaston, and I was not disappointed today. I know that she represented this country in fencing, so I advise noble Lords not to mess with this particular lady.

The noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead, is one of those people who always makes me feel completely inadequate whenever he speaks, but he also puts into action his words and his incredible thinking. It has been mentioned that the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy was one of his ideas, and that is just an example of his versatility. I am looking forward to working with him on many common interests, but not least on modern slavery. To be a member of his triumvirate of inquiry into modern slavery, albeit a rather junior one, together with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was a seminal moment for me.

This Bill is to be welcomed. Ensuring that those who have paid all their lives for a pension should be given a fair basic income is something that I hope we can all subscribe to, and that is certainly what I have heard so far today. I am pleased to support this measure.

Today is one of those occasions when I very much regret that I am not speaking to your Lordships in person. The reason for that is that it is difficult to convey while seated in my home my passion for a cause that I feel strongly about, and an injustice against our fellow citizens that can be righted within this simple measure. The Minister may well know what is coming, as I wrote to the Pensions Minister, Guy Opperman, last week, outlining my intention to raise this issue, and hopefully to table an amendment in Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has already raised it, as have my noble friends Lady Altmann and Lord Trenchard, but I make no apology for continuing the theme. This is the issue of frozen pensions for nearly half a million UK pensioners living abroad. Across the world, hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens, British state pensioners, are being discriminated against simply because they chose to retire to the “wrong” country.

There are 120 countries throughout the world where UK pensioners receive only the amount that was the pension at the time of their leaving the country. Eighteen of those countries have 1,000 or more affected pensioners. This is not a new issue, and it has been rattling around Governments of all persuasions for many years. A whole series of Pensions Ministers, perhaps even the noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead, when he held the position, have had the same brief from the department. I am sure that whenever the Minister’s civil servants hear of anyone raising this, they simply go to the file marked “usual issues”, blow off some dust, and pull out the identical brief. I know the arguments behind the answers to this injustice; I have heard them many times. Many Members of the other place and your Lordships’ House have raised this issue over the years. Notably, in a passionate and eloquent speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, raised it recently in a debate about the Commonwealth.

We will not cease raising the issue until this wrong is righted, but just in case it is needed, let me repeat the situation. All British pensioners who have made national insurance contributions during their working lives are entitled to a British state pension, regardless of where they choose to live. Crucially, however, 4% of those recipients are denied their full pension because of an illogical government policy which prevents their pensions being uprated in line with inflation. The UK state pension is payable overseas but is uprated only if the pensioner resides in the European Economic Area or a country with which the UK has a reciprocal agreement which legally requires uprating. Otherwise, the state pension is frozen at the level it was on the date the pensioner left the UK or first drew their pension. Falling in real value year on year, this plunges hundreds of thousands of pensioners into poverty, including thousands of UK veterans. They include people such as 95 year-old World War II veteran Anne Puckridge, who served in all three Armed Forces and who receives a meagre £72.50 per week of the £134.25-per-week state pension she should rightfully have. This is all because she moved to Canada—a Commonwealth country—at the age of 76, to be closer to her family. It also includes another wonderful lady, whose case I have raised before in your Lordships’ House, Monica Phillips, who emigrated to the UK in 1959 as part of the Windrush generation. She worked in the UK for 37 years and was a devoted public servant. In 1996, Monica returned to Antigua to look after her ailing mother, and as a result her pension was frozen at £74.11 per week. The arbitrary nature of this policy is illustrated by the fact that Monica’s sister, who remained in Leicester, receives a full uprated pension.

Perhaps there is a popular misconception that those retiring overseas are all wealthy, but the fact is that there are many who are suffering pensioner poverty. The Government will trot out that they now make people aware that their pensions will be frozen when they leave, but many who retired years ago maintain that this was never mentioned. Of course, many feel that they still have no option but to go abroad regardless because of their family commitments. So why do I hope that the time to rectify this blot on the good name of the UK is now? In the withdrawal agreement Act, passed in January 2020, the Government rightly committed to continuing to uprate the pensions of UK pensioners who moved to the EU before 2021 in line with inflation. Surely it is time to treat all our pensioners equally, regardless of where they reside. If the concept of reciprocity is still so much an idée fixe in our Government’s mindset, then perhaps we should now broach this in every trade deal we are striving to conclude, especially with our Commonwealth partners. That is also true of our oversea territories, as it is only Bermuda and Gibraltar which receive uprating.

We have heard about the situation which the pandemic has created. Let me remind the Government that this is worldwide. If it is about cost, I will not mention how we have managed to find billions when we need to. There is, however, a matter of raw politics: in February 2018, the Government restated their commitment to ending the current 15-year time limit for British expats registering as overseas electors. Perhaps that, combined with other factors, means that UK citizens will be eligible to receive their proper pension, as we want.

I pay tribute to those who have worked tirelessly to raise this issue, and particularly to the International Consortium of British Pensioners and stalwart campaigners such as John Duffy and Jim Tilley. The latter was a good Uxbridge man before he left for Australia. I am not expecting anything to happen today, but I can assure those many UK pensioners living around the world who contributed to this country that I and others will continue to fight for justice and restore the country’s reputation for fair play.

Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Lord Randall of Uxbridge Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 27th October 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 24, at end insert—
“(2C) No power may be exercised under this or any other Act so as to exempt persons not ordinarily resident in Great Britain, but who reside in a country with which there is a reciprocal social security arrangement requiring up-rating, from entitlement to up-rating increases granted by an order made by virtue of subsection (2A).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that this up-rating applied to all overseas pensioners who reside in a country with a reciprocal social security arrangement, including any whose pensions have previously been frozen in accordance with Government policy.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I make no apology for returning to the subject which I raised at Second Reading: the injustice of frozen UK pensions overseas. First, I thank my noble friend the Minister for kindly arranging a meeting with me and some of her officials. I am grateful to her for listening so intently. I understand that she is unlikely to be able to accede to my request in this debate.

This amendment is not the one I should like to have tabled, but the ever-helpful Table Office pointed out that the amendment I wanted to table would not be within the scope of the Bill. I should like to have used the amendment tabled in the other place by the Scottish National Party:

“(2C) No power may be exercised under this or any other Act so as to exempt persons not ordinarily resident in Great Britain from entitlement to up-rating increases granted by an order made by virtue of section (2A) of this Act.”


In his reply, my honourable friend Guy Opperman, the Pensions Minister, rejected the amendment, saying that

“this is a long-standing policy pursued by successive post-war Governments, who have taken the view that priority should be given to those living in the United Kingdom in drawing up expenditure plans for pensioner benefits. There are no plans to change that policy. The up-rating of the state pension is intended to provide support for pensioners who live in the UK.”—[Official Report, Commons, Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill, 1/10/2020; col. 578.]

His statement was factually incorrect, as we know that uprating exists for those who live outside the UK but only in countries where there is a reciprocal agreement. My amendment seeks to clarify this. I trust that my noble friend can do so this afternoon.

At Second Reading, I followed my noble friend Lord Trenchard. He mentioned the unfair situation with regard to those who have served this country in the Armed Forces. I spoke of my home town of Uxbridge, with its strong RAF connections. Among the several case studies I shall mention this afternoon, I want to recall that of Wing Commander Harry Penny. He was the commanding officer of RAF Uxbridge in his last years in the UK before he emigrated to Australia. Interestingly, when he arrived in Australia, he was encouraged to continue making national insurance voluntary contributions to boost his national insurance record, and so ended up with a full UK pension when he reached 65 in the 1980s. He was never advised that it would be frozen.

As we approach Remembrance Sunday, I am sure that all noble Lords will be aware of the Battle of Kohima, and the deeply moving words from the Kohima memorial will be uttered around the world. Patricia Coulthard was present at the Battle of Kohima, and she is now fighting for veterans who retired abroad and have had their state pensions frozen. Ms Coulthard, who moved to Australia to be near her two children, told our Prime Minister earlier this year that she receives just £46 a week. That payment contrasts with the full state pension in the UK today of £175.20 per week. This amazing 99 year-old lady is just one of the more than 60,000 veterans who also suffer from frozen pensions. Ms Coulthard cared for soldiers who were injured at Dunkirk, before being sent to India, where she served in a jungle field hospital during the Battle of Kohima, in which around 4,000 of the British and Indian forces lost their lives. She suffered malaria, dysentery, fever and pleurisy, but she remembers her comrades and experiences with pride.

Roger Edwards risked his life for his country in the Falklands War, taking part in some of the conflict’s most hazardous operations, including the SAS raids on Pebble Island and Goose Green and the retaking of South Georgia. Roger is 70 now, and if he lives to a ripe old age, he could potentially end up being out of pocket by as much as £7,000 a year. Mr Edwards, who was born in Wiltshire, did not lose his full pension entitlement because he moved to a foreign country with no connection with the UK. No, he lives in the very place he risked his life for: the Falkland Islands. Yes, it is a UK overseas territory. This means he has full British citizenship. Yet that has not stopped the UK Government freezing his basic state pension. Mr Edwards is not alone. There are 42 people living on those islands with a frozen UK pension, about half of whom are military veterans.

Elsewhere in our overseas territories, our fellow citizens living in places as diverse as Montserrat and the Caribbean and the South Atlantic island of St Helena also have to make do with frozen pensions. Bizarrely, however, this policy does not apply to all 14 overseas territories. For example, those living in Bermuda, 5,800 miles north of the Falklands, and one of the world’s wealthiest places, enjoy the triple lock pension increases that their counterparts in the UK receive. All told, there are around 680 UK pensioners living in UK overseas territories with frozen pensions, even though they have made the same national insurance contributions as their UK peers.

That we have pensioners and military veterans such as Patricia Coulthard living on as little as £46 a week is utterly shameful and must serve as a wake-up call to end this callous, cruel and immoral policy without delay. However, it is not just our veterans who suffer this injustice. I have mentioned before that there is deep concern that members of the Windrush generation who spent their working lives in the UK but retired abroad are also losing out through frozen pensions.

I could continue with lots of cases of individuals. Around half a million are so affected. However, I contend that it is only right that every pensioner is more than a number on a spreadsheet in Westminster—or Whitehall, to be more correct—and it is high time that the Government held up their end of the bargain and gave all pensioners the pensions to which they are entitled. Many pensioners said they did not know the situation when they left the country. Today, there is information on GOV.UK about what the effect of going abroad will be on their entitlement. A government spokesperson said:

“The government continues to uprate state pensions overseas where there is a legal requirement to do so—for example in countries where there is a reciprocal agreement that allows for uprating.”


However, it appears that that information has not always been available for those leaving our shores. It is time we changed our policy, as the time-honoured reason given for this shameful state of affairs has been nothing but a blister on this country’s good name for fairness.

I know that appealing to successive Governments to do the right thing has simply not worked. There have sometimes been warm words at best, but certainly no action. I want to suggest to the Government something they could and should do to be more positive about it. How about proactively trying to get reciprocal agreements? Having left the EU seems to be the perfect time to think about it. Apparently, the last time an agreement was signed was in 1992, with Barbados. In 1992, I was still a slim young man selling furniture in Uxbridge, and although, luckily, through the miracle of Zoom your Lordships cannot see my current frame, I am sure you will realise that that was a long time ago. I have changed somewhat, but the Governments of the day still resolutely refuse even to try to rectify this situation. I would say to the Government that I would be happy to be part of any team to get these agreements signed and sealed, and with a substantial number of new ones, perhaps they will concede that all UK pensions abroad should be treated equally and fairly. However, I fear that the will is not there.

I have seen a communication from a Canadian MP, who states:

“I am told that the UK has continually declined overtures to open this issue and that it will not consider the indexation of UK pensions paid into Canada. I understand that a number of Members of Parliament have raised this issue in recent months. Canada first opened the door to this possibility with the UK when the Conservatives were in government in 2013, and the UK declined our offer to enter into negotiations about this.”


I cannot say whether that is the case. Perhaps we can have some clarification on that and, indeed, on whether any other overtures by other countries have been rejected similarly.

In the Second Reading debate it was a great pleasure to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead, who, among many of his achievements in the other place, chaired the Select Committee on Social Security. In one of its reports on this issue, under his chairmanship, it was stated that it is a political question, which includes, but is not distinct from, a moral question. As always, the noble Lord put his experienced finger on the button.

I feel I have detained the House long enough on this, but I would like to ask whether Civil Service pensions are similarly frozen. Indeed, are those of Members of Parliament frozen? I wonder whether if any of my former colleagues decided to emigrate for whatever reason—I know that one or two of them threaten to do it periodically—they would be so pleased if they knew that their pensions would be frozen. Are service pensions the same? Perhaps my noble friend can find the answer to that and see whether it is just the state pension that discriminates in this way.

I add that if a UK pensioner returns to the UK for a holiday or some other reason, for the period that they are here, the pension will be paid at the updated sum—assuming, of course, that they contact the pension centre. Again, this discriminates against those who are too elderly to travel and those who cannot afford it, the very people we should be fully supporting.

This issue has been around for far too long, and it is about time that we as a Parliament and a nation decided that it should be resolved and that discrimination in our pension system should be abolished for all time.

[Baroness Janke (LD) [V]]

I thank the noble Lord for his interesting and eloquent speech. I remember that at Second Reading he was equally impassioned, and it is very good that he has put this amendment down. On the face of it, the policy seems extremely unjust, unfair, inconsistent and totally unjustifiable. Can the Minister give us more of an explanation of how it happened? It seems like some kind of anomaly. How many pensioners are affected in total? What is the future outlook? What would be the implications if this amendment were to be agreed to? I, too, looked at the debate in the other place, and I found the Minister’s response dismissive and completely uninformative, so it would be very good if we could have a bit more information about this current situation.

The noble Lord mentioned veterans in particular. It again seems completely unjust and completely lacking in any kind of compassion or gratitude for what those people have done for their country. Again, perhaps we could be allowed to know how many of these people are veterans.

The noble Lord mentioned government reciprocal agreements. That is right, but again, you need the political will, and whether that is there seems in doubt.

This certainly is a moral question. Here, I would like to mention the fact that many UK citizens are not allowed to vote, unlike in other countries. For example, France has an MP for citizens living abroad. I feel that if these people were able to exercise their vote, there might be a bit more political will to do justice for them all.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have had no requests to speak after the Minister.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I normally find that if I do not have high expectations, I will not be readily disappointed. I thank my noble friend the Minister for her replies. I was not expecting any great change to 70 years of the government policy of all parties, but this is something that we should be looking at. As was said, perhaps the Conservative manifesto commitment to give the vote to people living overseas may be the incentive for us to look again at this issue.

I am disappointed that there seems to be no desire to try to get reciprocal agreements. I take the point that free trade agreements will not include this sort of thing, but diplomacy between countries, even if it is not actually in the agreement, is something that we should be looking at. I urge those countries, particularly the Commonwealth countries, that know we want to do trade with them to consider this; we might just sneak it into the conversation that they might be more willing to be helpful if they had a look at some of these things.

As I said, I was not expecting anything. I am grateful for the other contributions to this debate. This is an issue that I will not let go—although not on Report, I am sure noble Lords will be delighted to know—and I will take it up at any opportunity until it is solved. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.