On Remembrance Sunday, our thoughts naturally turn to honouring those who served in war and made the ultimate sacrifice in conflicts that have shaped the world in which we live today.
The commitment to our military veterans is one of the many shared values between Canada and the UK; those shared values formed the basis of a recent visit by Canadian parliamentarians to the UK, where we held several discussions with our colleagues in Westminster and the devolved parliaments and assemblies.
One of the most passionate of these was a discussion on the issue of ‘frozen’ pensions, a policy of successive UK governments that leaves around 500,000 British pensioners living on state pensions as low as £25 per week. Over 125,000 of these pensioners live in Canada.
This cruel and indefensible policy robs thousands of pensioners of the retirement they were promised and deserve.
In some cases, it pushes British pensioners into working well into their retirement. 83-year-old Peter Sanguinetti, for example, served in the Dorset Regiment and was stationed in the West Indies.
Now living in Canada, his pension has been frozen at a mere £90 per week and he has been forced to work part-time as a school bus driver to supplement this lost income.
Other pensioners like 97-year-old Anne Puckridge, who lives in Calgary, served in all three-armed forces of the British military, and worked in the UK well past retirement age until moving to Canada, aged 71, to live near her daughters. Anne receives a pension of just £72.50 a week yet outrageously would continue to receive rightful uprating if she had moved to the USA rather than Canada.
This is the crux of the issue and part of the debate which causes such distress to pensioners and anger amongst my parliamentary colleagues across national and political divides. Why is a UK pensioner in the USA treated differently to those living in Canada? There is no difference, no distinction, and no justification for treating citizens differently depending on where they happen to live.
British pensioners in Canada, and other nations impacted by this postcode lottery, do not want special treatment – they want the same treatment. They paid into their pensions and should get their pensions – this is not a complex argument.
Those of us who stand with frozen pensioners are familiar with the common ‘justification’ of the UK Government: state pensions are only uprated in countries where there is a legal requirement to do so. With the support of Canadian politicians across the political spectrum, the Canadian Government has quite rightly made numerous requests to enter into discussions for a reciprocal social security agreement, providing this very legal requirement.
This has been requested four times since 2013 and on each time the UK Government has refused without so much as a discussion or debate.
Put simply, this is not an approach that one expects between long-standing allies, Commonwealth partners and nations with shared values. Even worse, it shows a total disregard for the impact of the policy on UK pensioners, some of whom now feel ‘ashamed’ to be British.
The UK Government needs to get around the table with the Canadian Government, agree to a new reciprocal agreement and end this injustice for good. Canada provides pension uprating to Canadian citizens in the UK, and it is high time the UK Government does the same.
In Ottawa and Westminster, parliamentarians are united by the moral case to end frozen pensions and ensure that all British pensioners have the retirement they earned, paid for, and deserve.
As we remember those who served our respective nations, and fought behind shared values and beliefs, we are drawn together by outrage for this longstanding injustice facing Britain’s ‘Greatest Generation’. I urge the UK Government to live up to the values it champions on the world stage and end this immoral policy for all.
Matt Jeneroux is the Canadian Conservative MP for Edmonton Riverbend
