Political Advocacy

CABP and the ICBP take very seriously their responsibilities to keep its campaign supporters informed.

Four times a year, members receive the newsletter, Justice keeping them up to date on happenings with our issue, along with providing useful information about such things as, claiming uprating when you are traveling overseas and minimizing the chances of experiencing very heavy medical expenses while traveling in the UK. So as a member you will be right up to date with progress with our campaign.

CABP and the ICBP are working on further new and powerful initiatives, including:

  • Additional pressure on the Canadian Government to strengthen their support of our campaign
  • Continuing to work with the UK Political Parties by setting up stands at their Party Conferences to get the message out.
  • emailing MP’s to keep them informed of the HARM done to so many Veterans by the frozen pension policy.
  • Talking to the British Trade Unions to let them know that their members will NOT get the FULL pension they have paid for, if they chose to live in a frozen country when they retire.
  • Strengthening of Commonwealth ties to present much more of a united Commonwealth front on this issue. CABP is a founding member of the ICBP; and remember, 48 of the 53 Commonwealth countries are ‘frozen’.
  • Rebuilding a new coalition of supportive UK MPs from all Parties, to help maintain a strong parliamentary front in Britain.
  • Keep up to date with the latest news and events.

There is no shortage of activities to be undertaken in support of our aggressive campaign. Just how much we can undertake depends entirely on the size of the support made available by you, current and soon-to-be frozen pensioners in Canada. We will succeed because you want to see this discriminatory practice ended by the NEW Coalition Government. But we must have your help!

Please support our campaign with a CABP Membership.

Notable Quotations

That lady and others like her are being cheated –there is no other word for it … by the Government of £53.60 per week of the pension to which they contributed. If we were talking about a private personal pension or a life insurance policy and the directors of the company tried to restrict the territorial area of payment, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister would have a shrewd idea of where those directors would be languishing now. They would be in goal and rightly so.

Winston S. Churchill M.P., House of Commons Debate, July 6 1994

The problem of frozen British pensions is a longstanding issue that ought now urgently to be settled and it is in the interests of all the countries involved–including the United Kingdom to reach a solution very soon.

Rt. Hon. Alfred Morris M.P. (Former Labour pensions Minister, now Lord Morris of Manchester), House of Commons Debate, July 4, 1995

Britain’s House of Commons Select Committee released a report on pension inequity

Their conclusions reinforce the objectives of CABP:

(para. 38) Surely no one would have designed a policy of paying pensions to people living abroad intending to end up in the position we are at today. We have essentially four groups of overseas countries: The European Economic Area, where European law requires equal treatment with pensioners living in the UK, other countries where bilateral agreements have been made which provide for uprating, three Old Commonwealth countries where bilateral agreements were made before indexation was taken into account, and the rest of the world.

(para. 39) It would clearly be impractical to negotiate bilateral agreements with each of the other countries in the world where people draw British state retirement pensions, and in any case unnecessary; a simple change in British law could enable upratings to be paid in any or all overseas countries, provided the political will was there to do so. The allocation of scarce resources and the language of priorities are what politics and government are all about. It is not a question of reaching a moral judgement about the rights and wrongs of the expatriates case, and then deciding whether or not this country can afford to do anything about it. The decision about whether public expenditure on state retirement pensions should be in future by paying uprating increases which are not required by law at the moment is a political question which includes, but is not distinct from, the moral question?

Extracted from the conclusion to the UK House of Commons Social Security Select Committee Report (1997)