Over time there have been two main changes affecting the rules on this.
The first came in 1978 when the state earnings-related pension scheme was introduced.
SERPS offered a salary-related retirement pension to all workers via the state pension system.
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But there was a risk that for those in company pensions already this would amount to ‘double provision’ – a worker would be paying in to his or her company pension as well as paying National Insurance contributions towards an earnings-related pension from the state.
By Martin Kerin
AS I write, news has come in that, for the first time in history, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will help feed children in the UK. For the first time in its 70 year history, UNICEF will respond to a UK ‘domestic emergency.’ Given recent events and following the Food Foundation’s findings that 2.4 million (17%) children are living in ‘food insecure households’, it was only a matter of time before an international agency was forced to step in.
2020 will down as a terrible year for our country and for the world. The pandemic has had an impact on all of our lives, but it has impacted the poorest of our society disproportionately worse. The simple reason for this is that rising poverty and inequality was already a major issue before the pandemic. The pandemic has simply turned the crisis of poverty and inequality into a catastrophe.
That means some expats who retired when the basic rate was £67.50 a week in 2000 still get that, rather than the £134.25 a week now received by others who retired that year.
However, it was announced this year that British expats in the European Union will continue to get annual increases in the state pension, plus healthcare rights, as long as they moved there before the end of 2020.
Why are state pensions frozen for some expats?
Whether an expat s pension is frozen or not depends entirely on where you move to, because the Government has struck individual deals with some countries but left around 150 others out in the cold.