Answering the Conservatives

The Tory boiler-plate letters have, up till now, said:

The position is that pension increases are payable to UK pensioners living in European Economic Area countries and in countries with which we have reciprocal agreements (including the USA, Turkey and Switzerland); however it is increasingly difficult to justify treating pensioners who choose to live in other countries, such as Australia, differently. Indeed, we have criticised the Government for refusing to have a proper dialogue with the Australian Government over the ending of the Anglo-Australian Social Security Agreement, which extended the problem to people living in Australia.

Recently we queried this with a Conservative MP and received the following reply

Dear Mr Nelson,

Thank you for your email regarding the Conservative response to frozen state pensions.

In your email you quite rightly pointed out inaccuracies in the paragraph describing the termination of the Anglo-Australian Social Security Agreement. I have followed this up with the Party and any future correspondence discussing the issue of termination will now read:

In the past my party has criticised the Government for refusing to have a proper dialogue with the Australian Government over the ending of the Anglo-Australian Social Security Agreement. The Australian Government terminated the agreement after the British Government refused to end the freezing of state pensions for expatriates.

Thank you again for highlighting this mistake. May I reiterate my Party’s commitment to resolving the serious problem of the frozen state pension in countries like Australia. I would be more than willing to hear your views as we look to formulate our pension policy.

Yours sincerely,

James Paice, MP