Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners (CABP)

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 gaol 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

Our Campaign

The growing membership of the Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners is made up of those increasingly angry expatriates worldwide, who lived and worked for a period of time in the United Kingdom. These individuals expected to receive the same level of pension entitlement as their fellow pensioners, for the contributions they were all equally required to make during that period.

There are some 11.5 million UK state pensioners living in the UK and some 40 other countries. All these pensioners have historically received annual uprating of their pensions. Of those, 556,500 expatriate pensioners receive uprating because they happen to live in some 40 countries where pensions are not frozen by the UK. Unfrozen countries include the European Union, USA, Israel, Philippines, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, etc..

The practice of paying equal benefits to members of the state contributory pension fund, regardless of their country of residence is normal and common to all countries within the member states of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. (OECD) The only exception is the United Kingdom which fails to treat all its expatriate pensioners equally.

518,260 expatriate pensioners, (92% of whom live in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa) have never received any uprating of their pensions since they received their first pension cheque as a resident of a frozen country.

All individuals who lived and worked in the United Kingdom were required to pay into the mandatory state contributory plan on an equal basis. Many of the frozen pensioners unstintingly served their country, both during and between times of war. Many of these received decorations for bravery (many others failed to return to live to see their pensions). They did not expect their government to treat them in this abominable way.

The Canadian Alliance has members in all provinces of Canada and in more than twenty five countries around the world. Included in our membership are residents of the United Kingdom who, after they retire, would like to join their families living in a non-uprated country. They are prevented from doing so, fearful of becoming a financial burden to their families as the value of their frozen UK pension income dwindles.

92% of the 518,260 pensioners who have their pensions frozen reside in the four largest of 53 Commonwealth countries. The remaining 8% live in some 121 other countries throughout the world. As all of these members grow older, the financial impact of pension freezing becomes increasingly difficult for them to cope with.

Currently, fraud in Britain's social security system is estimated at £7 billion every year. To end pension discrimination would cost Britain £300 million per year. This equates to 4.3% of the current loss through fraud.

Data gathered from DWP Sept. 2006 - Dec. 2006

In January 1997, Britain's House of Commons Select Committee released a report on pension inequity. Their conclusions reinforce the purpose of the Alliance:

(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)