Former Servicemen Living Abroad: State Pensions

HL Deb 02 March 1998 vol 586 cc128-9WA

Lord Stoddart of Swindon

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they have any plans to review the position with regard to state pensions to former British servicemen and their families in those countries with which there are no reciprocal arrangements to raise pensions in line with inflation. [HL707]

Baroness Hollis of Heigham

The Government have no plans at present to change the policy that state retirement pensions are uprated only within the European economic area and in certain countries with which the United Kingdom has a social security agreement which provides for uprating. There are over 400,000 UK pensioners living abroad whose pensions are not uprated. Many are likely to be former servicemen and their wives. It would cost some £250 million a year fully to unfreeze those pensions—that is, to bring them up to the rate which would be paid if the pensioners were in the UK. There are competing demands and constraints on social security spending, and it would be wrong to raise expectations that uprating these pensions would be likely to attract priority under current circumstances.