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State Pensions: UK Expatriates

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), chair of the all-party parliamentary group on frozen British pensions, for his tireless and forceful campaigning on this issue over many years. I am proud to be a member of that group, but it is very much about his determination to see an end to this injustice. I hope that his campaigning, both personally and collectively, will soon start to bear the fruit that it deserves.

We are having this debate in an unexpected context. It was announced before the Easter recess, when none of us—even those on the Government Benches—had any idea that we would see Parliament dissolved and a general election. I think that is partly why fewer hon. and right hon. Members are here than there would otherwise have been, which is a shame. However, I was going to make the point anyway that there is a simple reason why this issue has never been resolved and

Governments have been able to ignore it again and again. I say “Governments” because, as the hon. Gentleman said, it has been ignored by successive Governments. This is not a party political issue. All parties have failed to deal with it during their times in government.

I love and am hugely proud of being my constituency’s representative. Representing Leeds North West is the part of my job that I love most. However, the reality is that these 550,000 British citizens, who are the same as every one of us here and as all our constituents who are UK citizens, do not have an MP. They do not have a single person who directly represents them and fights their cause in the way that we all do when we receive constituents in our surgeries who tell us about injustices that they face. One MP, or groups of us, can take up those issues and campaign until we finally get Ministers, of whatever colour or Government, to make a change. This group of people do not have an MP. They are disenfranchised and are not represented. Constitutionally, the length of time that this injustice has endured means that it may now be time to look at what France and other countries do and somehow have representation for our UK citizens who live abroad.