British Government fails to pay Caribbean nationals their pension

Sep 05, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
According to the latest available figures, there are 32,710 people living in 16 Caribbean countries entitled to a British Government pension. Most of these people are Caribbean nationals yet 25% of them are cheated out of part of their pension every year by the British Government.
The British Government misuses a piece of outdated legislation to save the British Exchequer millions of pounds each year by failing to meet its commitment to pay pensions to Caribbean nationals who have paid exactly the same as everyone else for their pension. It is simple and straight forward discrimination. The U.K. Government claims that anyone leaving the U.K. for a country with which there is no reciprocal agreement will have their pension frozen at the time of leaving and will not receive annual increases. This is an abuse of legislation which was designed to protect pensioners not to penalize them.
More puzzling is that if you move to one of the British dependent territories such as Montserrat, Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, the Turks & Caicos or the BVI, you still have your pension frozen. How can the U.K. Government have a reciprocal agreement with a territory over which it has overall control?
About 60% of British Caribbean pensioners live in Jamaica and about 15% in Barbados and they have their pensions up-rated every year, but if you are unlucky enough to have moved to one of the dependent territories listed above or to Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent, Antigua, Trinidad or Guyana then the British Government cheat you out of part of your pension each year. However, if you live in the USVI or Guadeloupe or St Maarten, St Barts or Martinique, never British territories, or in Jamaica and Barbados, you do get your pension increased each year. How fair is that?
Worldwide, the British Government annually cheats 550,000 pensioners out of part of their pension, mostly in Australia and Canada but not in the United States. Of around 200 countries, 150 are discriminated against by the U.K. Government. In 2006 an organisation called the International Consortium of British Pensioners (ICBP) comprising other groups around the world but particularly those in Australia and Canada, was founded to fight the British Government. Recently, the ICBP invited the Caribbean to set up its own organisation – the British Caribbean Pensioners Association (BCPA) – to assist in the fight for the rights of British Caribbean pensioners.
At present, there is an Early Day Motion being presented to the U.K. Parliament to correct the injustice but it needs support from U.K. MPs. Anyone with a frozen British pension should write to the MP where they last lived in the U.K. and urge them to support EDM 159 – details can bee seen at https://www.parliament.uk/edm/2017-19/159. To get the e-mail address of any U.K. MP for any constituency go to http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/
Also, lobby your MP in your own country to get your Government to bring pressure to bear on the U.K. Government to end this discrimination. There have been suggestions that the U.K. should be suspended from the Commonwealth until it introduces equal treatment for all its pensioners as its discrimination is contrary to Commonwealth principles.
At the end of October a group of representatives, including one from the Caribbean, is travelling to the U.K. to meet with MPs to press for a correction to this massive injustice. The more support from British Caribbean pensioners, the greater the pressure which can be brought to bear on the U.K. Government. You can join the British Caribbean Pensioners Association by e-mailing to [email protected]
John J Duffy
British Caribbean Pensioners Association

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