DWP confirms 500,000 state pensioners will not see rise to payments in April
Around 500,000 state pensioners will not see their pension payments rise in April the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has confirmed.
In the Autumn Statement last year, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt confirmed the state pension would increase by 8.5% from April this year. This move would give pensioners an extra £900 over the year. However, the uplift does not some pensioners who have moved overseas.
Under the current pension rules, the UK state pension is only uprated for someone if they live in the UK, the European Economic Area (EEA), Gibraltar, Switzerland, and countries with a social security agreement with the UK. However, popular retirement spots outside of Europe including Canada and New Zealand do not have this agreement. According to official figures, around half a million Brits will not see their payments go up this year.
Pensions minister Paul Maynard told parliament last week that the DWP had “no plans” to uprate frozen state pension payments. Speaking as part of a debate on UK residents living overseas, Independent MP Rob Roberts told the pensions minister it was a “matter of simple fairness” for all British citizens living in the Commonwealth to be entitled to an uprating of their state pension.
He said: “Following our withdrawal from the EU, we are rightly able to move closer with our partners in the Commonwealth and one of the ways we can do that would be to confirm that all British citizens that live in the Commonwealth should be entitled to the appropriate uprating of their state pension as if they were still in the UK, it would seem a matter of simple fairness.
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“Will the minister meet with me to discuss the practicalities of making that happen and restore some much needed common sense to a needlessly complicated situation?”
In response, Paul Maynard said the UK Government continued to uprate state pensions "when there is a legal requirement for that to be done" and there were no plans to change its "longstanding policy or enter into any new reciprocal social security agreements."
He added: "According to the latest estimate, based on data from March 2022, uprating the state pension where we do not currently do so would cost about £0.9billion a year if all UK state pensions in payment were increased to current UK levels."
Campaigners - alongside MPs - have fought to have the policy changed over the last few years. It became significantly prominent after the UK pension rose by 10.1% last April. Last year, Nigel Green, CEO and founder of deVere Group said it was an "outrage" that half a million people would miss out on the rise.
Last year, he said: "Having a frozen pension means that your retirement income falls in real terms year on year due to inflation - and never has this been more true than as the cost of living has soared. It seems completely unjust that someone living in the USA will receive an extra £1,000, yet someone just across the border in Canada, in the same situation, will not."
In a statement on frozen state pensions, a DWP spokesperson previously told the Mirror: “The Government’s policy on the up-rating of the UK state pension for recipients living overseas is a longstanding one of more than 70 years and we continue to uprate state pensions overseas where there is a legal requirement to do so. We understand that people move abroad for many reasons and that this can impact on their finances. There is information on GOV.UK about what the effect of going abroad will be on entitlement to the UK state pension."
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