Petition

Please sign this new e-petition.

There is a new petition on the UK PMs website created by a Derek
Richards, who has emigrated to New Zealand, and is appealing for support
against freezing of his pension. It only has 66 signatures at present,
I'm sure everyone would like to add their support. You can find
the petition at the following web address.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Pensionless/

You fill in your name and address and email. If you do not live in the UK you select the drop down box and identify yourself as an expatriate.

The e-petition site will send you an email. You must then click on the link
to confirm that you wish to be listed as a signatory.

You can only use your email address once, but you can include two names on
the signature line.

Please ask as many people as possible to add their support. This may not affect you now but it may in time to come.

Oh for heaven's sake. This has been done to death. A web petition isn't going to change anything. From the UK govt perspective, frozen expat pensions = significant cost saving, negligible votes lost. Get over it.

Ever the pessemist I see. If everyone thought like you nobody would achieve anything.

People on BERIA are doing an excellent job in Australia contacting all the MP's in the UK and Australia why don't you join in or is it all too easy for you to sit back and do absolutely NOTHING!! I hope your frozen just like your pension!!

What on earth makes you think contacting Australian MPs will achieve anything? Expat UK pensioners are even less of a constituency for them than for UK MPs.

I'm not sitting back and doing absolutely nothing - I'm working and contributing to a pension plan in the country I've moved to. I have a small private pension in the UK, to which I paid in what I gained back through opting out of SERPS. When I opted out I wasn't planning to emigrate, but I wouldn't have wanted to rely on a UK state pension even had I stayed in the UK.

Nobody mentioned about relying on a UK State Pension but it is an injustice for people who have paid in all their working lives the same as everyone else to be penalised just because they retire to a specific country to be with family. There is no logical reason why you in Canada should only get x amount and a friend in the US gets the full amount.

An elderly relative of mine lives in OZ and receives £40 pm where as her sister lives in the USA and gets the full pension £132+ per week. Both have paid in the same number of years and the same amounts - explain that one.

The point being no one was ever told that if they retired to certain countries their pension would be frozen. We certainly had no intention of doing so 40 years ago. This is an injustice and it doesn't matter who you contact if they will listen and maybe have some infuence.

Believe me the Australian government would rather you got your full entitlement from the UK government than claim from them.

It's not a pension fund. It's a tax. You should be grateful you're getting anything at all.

You're saying that retired Brits living in Oz are claiming benefits from the Australian government? That doesn't seem very fair to the Ozzies, does it?

I would have thought that is why they are frozen in some places and not others. Here in the US you are entitled to practically nothing from the government, whereas I believe in Australia there are all kinds of things you can get, for instance when buying a house for the first time.

Presumably once you're legally settled in Australia, one would be entitled to the same things as other citizens. Just as one is entitled to all the benefits in the UK when legally settled.

That makes it sound equal doesn't it? Unlike the Pensions uprating....

Indeed. Anyone who thought that their 'National Insurance' was paying into a pension fund for their retirement is going to get a rude awakening over the next few years when the money runs out.

You've been paying for the generation above you to have a cosy retirement; the generation below you are going to revolt rather than pay 50+% taxes in order to fund pensions for the generation above them which they'll never receive themselves.

The UK government has plans to take pensions completely out of National Insurance altogether and employees will automatically be entered into a scheme where both they, and their employer, contributes to their pension.

The employee will be able to opt out of the scheme but if/when they change
jobs they will automatically be entered in unless they opt out again.

This matter of the unfairness of the expats in commonwealth countries not doing so well as the non-commonwealth countries will eventually become non-existent. It's a long way off but I think that the UK government is happy to just sit it out, why wouldn't they?

There are some changes to the UK pension payments in the pipeline for people retiring after 2010. Anyone know what they are?

I thought some Britons here were on welfare, which is why the Canadian Govt funded part of the court case against the UK govt

Also, people who can afford to emigrate can probably afford to stick a few quid away in a pension fund for their old age. If you're that destitute you should probably stay in the UK so you can get your massive state pension in full.

Australia terminated its social security agreement with the U.K. in 2001 for precisely this reason, so there's not much more Australia can do in that respect.