Pensions: Expatriates

Debate between Peter Dowd and Kirsty Blackman

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Eleven years ago, my colleague Ian Blackford stood in pretty much this spot talking about exactly the same thing. Exactly the same arguments that were made during that debate could be made today. Things have not moved on. We are not in a better position. At that time, we were talking about 550,000 frozen pensions; now we are down to 500,000. People are dying before they receive their entitlements.

Pensions are a social contract. We pay our national insurance and our taxes into the system in the expectation and with the understanding that we will get something out of it when we become pensioners. This is not party political: it applies to all Governments over the last 70 years. No UK Government have been willing to fulfil the contract with pensioners who choose to live in a certain country. I do not think that that is fair. When we begin to pay taxes, we are not told that our pension entitlement will vary if we choose to live in one of these countries.

That they are overwhelmingly Commonwealth countries seems even more bizarre. We have a special relationship with the Commonwealth: for example, 12% of Canadians claim Scottish heritage and 14% claim English heritage. Scotland is a nation of emigrants as well as a nation of immigrants—not an island of strangers. It is a brilliant thing that we Scots are found all over the world. In a significant number of places, people with Aberdeen accents can be found speaking the Doric.

People should be allowed to go and live with their family in the expectation that the Government will continue to support them in older age, not pull the rug out from under them. They have paid into the system just the same as the people who choose to live here. In fact, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) says, they are taking less out of the system than those who continue to live here. The cost-benefit analysis shows that people overseas are not using the NHS here on a regular basis. They are not getting the free prescriptions in Scotland. They are not getting prescriptions down here. They are not getting a free TV licence—well, nobody is getting a free TV licence. They are not getting the benefits that an older pensioner living in the UK would expect. They are not taking those things out of the system, yet the UK is still unwilling to uprate their pensions. They are going to live with their families, in a significant number of cases, and not getting their entitlements.

The Deputy Prime Minister previously said:

“The situation is unfair, illogical and doesn’t make sense.”

It has never been enough of a priority for any Government to sort out, but given the current Government’s electoral standing with some older people on the basis of WASPI and the winter fuel payment, it might be an idea to solve the situation now and gain back some of that capital.

A lady who lives in Canada is coming to visit Scotland in June and is going to pop into my office while she is here. She is from Aberdeen. She went to St Margaret’s school and her husband went to the school I went to; there is an annual music prize awarded in his honour. At the end of her email asking to come and see me, Maureen added something about frozen pensions:

“I believe the Prime Minister is not happy about us Canadians kicking up a fuss. We have been doing it for at least 15 years, but no one listens.”

That is the biggest injustice of all: the fact that we are not listening.

I am pleased that the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) has secured this debate. Like many of us, he is standing on the shoulders of giants: the issue has been brought up for years and years, but we have never managed to make enough of an impact on the Government to get the change to happen and have them recognise that this is important. As several Members have said, now that we have had a change in the electoral rights of people overseas so that they are able to vote for longer, perhaps the Government will feel more under pressure. But it should not have taken that. It should have been understood that this was a moral decision. It does not matter where someone chooses to live out their twilight years; they should have the same entitlements as others who have paid the same amount over the years.

The hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Douglas McAllister) spoke about his constituent from Clydebank who worked in Govan. The country has been built—these islands have been built—on the hard work of these people throughout our manufacturing history. Anne Puckridge, who is an unbelievable human being, was in the RAF and made a huge input to our prosperity and the safety and security of these islands. We are paying these people back by saying, “Nah, you’ve paid the same as everybody else, but you’ve chosen to live in a different postcode, so we’re not paying it.” This is an injustice that needs fixed.

I know that I have managed to speak for seven minutes, but actually it is pretty difficult to stretch this out. All there is to say is, “This needs sorted. Please could you sort it?” That is the passionate case that we are all making on behalf of our constituents and those who might choose to move to other countries in future. We do not want them to have to ask, “Do I want to live in Canada where my daughter lives? Do I want to live somewhere else, or do I have to stay here because I cannot get my pension uprated?”

I am not asking for a full commitment on any of this. I am not asking for all the backdated stuff. I am not asking for a commitment for every single individual. I understand that some international agreements may have to be made to make some of this happen. But I want the Government to say, “We recognise that this is a priority for people and that there is an unfairness in the system. We will look at doing what we can to ensure that people, no matter where they choose to live, get the pensions that they are entitled to.”

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that we are not supposed to use the second person. Please address things through me and not directly to other Members.

Online Safety: Children and Young People

Debate between Peter Dowd and Kirsty Blackman

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I could talk for hours on this subject, Mr Dowd, but, do not worry, I will not. There are a number of things that I would like to say. Not many Members present sat through the majority of the Online Safety Bill Committee as it went through Parliament, but I was in every one of those meetings, listening to various views and debating online safety.

I will touch on one issue that the hon. Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) raised in her excellent and important speech. I agree with almost everything she said. Not many people in Parliament have her level of passion or knowledge about the subject, so I appreciate her bringing forward the debate.

On the issue of features, I totally agree with the hon. Member and I moved an amendment to that effect during the Bill’s progress. There should be restrictions on the features that children should be able to access. She was talking about safety by design, so that children do not have to see content that they cannot unsee, do not have to experience the issues that they cannot un-experience, cannot be contacted by external people who they do not know, and cannot livestream. We have seen an increase in the amount of self-generated child sexual abuse material and livestreaming is a massive proportion of that.

Yesterday, a local organisation in Aberdeen called CyberSafe Scotland launched a report on its work in 10 of our primary schools with 1,300 children aged between 10 and 12—primary school children, not secondary school children. Some 300 of those children wrote what is called a “name it”, where they named a problem that they had seen online. Last night, we were able to read some of the issues that they had raised. Pervasive misogyny is everywhere online, and it is normalised. It is not just in some of the videos that they see and it is not just about the Andrew Tates of this world—it is absolutely everywhere. A couple of years ago there was a trend in online videos of young men asking girls to behave like slaves, and that was all over the place.

Children are seeing a different online world from the one that we experience because they have different algorithms and have different things pushed at them. They are playing Roblox and Fortnite, but most of us are not playing those games. I am still concerned that the Online Safety Act does not adequately cover all of the online gaming world, which is where children are spending a significant proportion of their time online.

A huge amount more needs to be done to ensure that children are safe online. There is not enough in place about reviewing the online safety legislation, which Members on both sides of the House pushed for to ensure that the legislation is kept as up to date as possible. The online world changes very rapidly: the scams that were happening nine months ago are totally different from those happening today. I am still concerned that the Act focuses too much on the regulation of Facebook, for example, rather than the regulation of the online world that our children actually experience. CyberSafe Scotland intentionally centred the views and rights of young people in its work, which meant that the programmes that it delivered in schools were much more appropriate and children were much better able to listen and react to them.

The last thing that I will mention is Girlguiding and its girls’ attitude survey. It is published on an annual basis and shows a huge increase in the number of girls who feel unsafe. That is because of the online world they are experiencing. We have a huge amount of responsibility here, and I appreciate the hon. Member for Darlington bringing the debate forward today.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I will keep this to an informal four-minute limit. Regrettably, if Members speak beyond that, I will have to introduce a formal figure.