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It’s shameful how the Tories have ignored Windrush pensioners, and a pity that Corbyn won’t do more
When the Empire Windrush docked in Tilbury in 1948, it brought 802 passengers from the Caribbean. Any who returned to Jamaica after a life spent working in England and paying national insurance rightly received a UK state pension, and it went up every year. It still does for the estimated 13,000 British retirees in Jamaica. But if those from the Windrush generation returned to Antigua or St Lucia, they faced a special cruelty: their UK state pension was frozen at the level on the day they left Britain. So if they retired in the mid-1990s and are still alive, they receive a UK state pension of about £58 a week, while those who went to Jamaica pick up £129 a week.
The way Britain pays state pensions to those who retire abroad is weirdly capricious. There are 134,000 retirees in the US now entitled to a UK state pension after paying their contributions here, and they enjoy annual increases. But across the border in Canada, there are 135,000 UK state pensioners – and they receive no increases at all. Continue reading...