Frozen Pensions Shame The UK

Given the recent Remembrance Sunday events, it was particularly moving to see an article in the Guardian from a female soldier who fought in World War II and feels ashamed at the British pension system.
When she was a teenage girl, Anne Puckridge had joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in India by “advancing” her age and was then moved to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, ending up in the Women’s Royal Naval Service.
After the war she returned to the UK and brought up her family, working in various administrative jobs and eventually took on the role of University lecturer in IT for Stroud university. She had paid her National Insurance contributions all her life. (You pay National Insurance contributions to qualify for the State Pension; for more about pension planning, talk to a financial advisor or a specialist tax accountant).
She then began to work part-time after reaching retirement age until she was 76, at which point she moved to Canada to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren. Unbeknownst to her, when she moved her state pension from the British government was frozen at the rate it was when she left the UK – and for the rest of her life. She had believed that she had been planning for her future by diligently paying her NI and saving for retirement.
The policy of pension-freezing affects some 550,000 British pensioners living overseas. What it means is that the pension you obtain at state retirement age (these days that’s around £113 per week) remains the same amount for the duration of your retirement, whereas it would usually fluctuate. Consequently, these pensioners become worse and worse off, many of them living on the breadline. Some pensioners with a full national insurance contribution history (30 years’ worth of payments) receive less than 25% of the pension that others with an identical contribution history living in another country, such as the neighbouring United States, receive.
There are 120 countries worldwide that are affected by this policy. For Anne Puckridge the biggest irony is that “most of these frozen pensioners live in the British Commonwealth, the very countries that bravely stood shoulder to shoulder with Britain during the second world war.”
It is often the oldest and most vulnerable, and veterans of war, who are the most affected by this archaic policy. Over 13 years, Anne has written countless letters to ministers and MPs campaigning for the abolishment of pension freezing, which deprives her and others of the little luxuries in life.
Another irony is that these pensioners living abroad are not providing a burden on the NHS and do not use other senior benefits provided by the UK. While we remember the veterans who died in the war, we still need to take care of the ones who fought hard and lived only to be left in terrible circumstances come old age.