This month I have been receiving the UK Government Pension for 15 years. I worked and paid into the UK pension from Dec 1944 until I left for Canada in 1963. This entitled me to a pension of 38.89 pounds.

Now here is the problem if I had emigrated to the US instead of Canada that pension would be worth 65.66 pounds an increase of approx 66% but as a expat living in Canada it's still the same 38.89 pounds.

For many years the expats in Canada, Australia and New Zealand have been fighting this to no avail. http://www.britishpensions.com/problem.html

Be prepared to be cheated when you start receiving your UK pension.

You are not being cheated, as the system has not changed. It was always the case that pensions are indexed for residents of some countries and not for residents of another country; you had the choice of moving to one where the pension would have been indexed but chose instead to go to one where it isn't. You may as well complain that, in choosing to move to Canada, you were cheated of warm weather.

To me the wonder is not that you don't get more money but that the government of a country you abandoned in 1963 should send you any money at all.

Old news

It wouldn`t surprise me if, in the future, the Government makes receipt of the pension dependent on residency in the UK. It would be, in my opinion, a justifiable cut to the welfare budget. The amount of ex pats that vote in the UK is unlikely to swing matters at election time.

This again .......

<yawn>

Awaits the inevitable petty bickering

Or that some 47 years after you left UK, the difference between GBP 65.66 and GBP 38.89, presumably per month, makes any material difference to your standard of living. And is something worth caring about.

I dunno, I'd like to have an extra twenty-six pounds, fifteen shillings and thrupence three-farthings per month to add to me Canadian guineas. Keep me in mead, that would. Never going to happen though and bitchin's only going to result in the lucky indexees losing their increases so best to say nuffink, I reckon.

Oh yes, who wouldn't want to have an extra couple bottles of wine, 24 of beer, x cartons of ciggies or n grams of artisan fromage per month, courtesy of Her Majesty's Govt. But would it make a material difference to your quality of life? I suspect not....

Nope. Times are not that hard, not yet anyway.

Thats per week.

To those that think that we shouldn't get any, then what about the other pensions that you may have paid into?

That type of pension is not funded by monies paid in the past but by current revenues. It hardly seems fair to burden the UK taxpayer with your artisan fromage bill while proclaiming yourself "100% Canadian".

So, on today's miserable exchange rate that's just over $40 a week, $173 a month and $2000 a year. Probably quite a bit more in previous years with a better $/£ rate even allowing for lower pension.

Plus several thousand $$$ banked had it been uprated.

How the other half must live that such amounts are to be scoffed at.

Just sayin'......

So how do you explain that expats in the US recieve indexed pensions?

You must be much much younger than I and either not planning to stay in Canada or didn't contribute to the UK pension.

You pretending to have a low income again?

Regardless of the morality of it, the OP should be at least be grateful that they are getting anything at all. Index linking isn't going to matter to the generation that is currently working to pay him his pension - given they will almost certainly get nothing when they retire.

As DBD states, you have not paid into anything (other than general taxation) as, unlike the Canadian equivalent, the NI contributions you made, and which qualify you for a pension, are not ring fenced as CPP is.

It's an historical anomaly, there's no justification for them receiving the money and I agree with the view above that, sooner or later, the government will get around to either ending indexing for people who left or ending the payments completely.

Nah, it's just me moral compass kicking in. If you're 100% Canadian there's no reason to claim a pension from the UK, from Chile, or from any other foreign country.