The problem
The UK state pension is uprated every year for people living in the UK. It is also uprated for those living in the European Economic Area, the USA and a number of other countries with which the UK has a reciprocal agreement.
In most other countries it is not. A British citizen who has paid National Insurance for a full working life and retires to a country without an agreement receives the rate in payment on the day they first claim — and that same cash figure for the rest of their life.
The effect compounds. Inflation does not pause because someone has moved abroad, so a frozen pension falls in real terms every single year. Two people with identical contribution records can receive very different amounts purely because of the country they retired to. A pensioner who moved to Canada and one who moved to the United States are treated differently despite sharing a border.
More than 450,000 pensioners are affected. Many are people who moved to be near children or grandchildren, or who returned to a country where they had family ties, and who did not discover the consequence until years afterwards.
Why it is not simply a cost question
The usual objection is cost. BOVF's position is that the argument has changed in a way that has not yet been absorbed by policymakers.
Until January 2024, most of the people affected could not vote. The 15-year rule meant that a pensioner who had lived abroad for two decades had no representation at all, and a group with no votes is a group whose problem can be deferred indefinitely.
The Elections Act 2022 abolished that rule on 16 January 2024. Every British citizen previously resident or registered in the UK can now vote in UK parliamentary elections for life. The 450,000 people whose pensions are frozen are electors. That is a change of circumstance, not a change of argument, and it is the reason BOVF asks every frozen pensioner it meets the same first question: are you registered?
What we are doing
BOVF's Frozen Pensions policy group, led by Vice Chair Lloyd Hobbard-Mitchell, works on remedies that a UK politician can realistically defend to a domestic audience — not simply a demand for more money. We have raised the issue in meetings with MPs across parties and through the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Citizens' Rights.
We work alongside longstanding campaigners on this issue rather than competing with them. Our distinctive contribution is the link to registration: an unregistered pensioner is invisible to the political system, and a registered one is a constituent.
Who is affected
- British pensioners living in most Commonwealth countries, including Australia, Canada and much of Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia
- British pensioners in Thailand and many other countries with no reciprocal agreement
- More than 450,000 people in total, a number that grows every year
- Anyone planning to retire abroad who has not checked whether their destination uprates
What BOVF proposes
- Uprate the state pension annually for all recipients, wherever they live, on the same basis as recipients in the UK
- As an interim step, publish clear pre-departure guidance so nobody retires abroad unaware their pension will freeze
- Treat the freeze as a voting-rights issue — the people affected are now electors for life under the Elections Act 2022
Policy group lead: Lloyd Hobbard-Mitchell. How policy groups work
Case studies
Thailand
Anthony: the pension that stopped in 2011
Anthony retired to Thailand on a full contribution record. His state pension has been paid at the 2011 rate ever since, and nobody warned him.
Thailand
John: doing the sums twenty years too late
John planned his retirement to Thailand carefully. The one variable he could not plan for was the one nobody mentioned.
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16 July 2025