Bernard and Sheila Weaver are a softly-spoken couple, hailing from Reading, just outside London.
He is 83 and she is 79. They migrated to Sydney in 2007.
From that moment, their UK pension payments - based on four decades of contributions to Britain's National Insurance Scheme - have stayed the same, rather than being adjusted for inflation.
"I'm getting £125 a week," says Mr Weaver.
"If that was fully uprated, I would probably be getting something near £170 a week.
“We've fully paid all our contributions … and we do feel that we're badly done by.”
If not for some additions, Bernard's "basic pension" would have been £87.
A Briton who arrived in 1980 still receives a maximum of £27, as opposed to £100 today if the sum had been indexed.
Someone arriving 1995 receives £59, instead of £101 today under indexation.
The fall in the Pound now eats further into their payments.
Pensions researcher Professor Peter Whiteford, from the Australian National University, says the regulation has survived a challenge in the European Court of Human Rights and lobbying by sympathetic parliamentarians in Britain.
"Essentially it's a way of saving money, I think around £600 million a year," he said.
"But they do pay indexed pensions in the United States, and I think it's just the bargaining power of the United States."
Frozen pensions affect some half-a million Britons across 150 mainly Commonwealth countries.
Nearly half of those people - some 247,000 - live in Australia. Another 144,000 live in Canada, with significant numbers in New Zealand and South Africa.
Jim Tilley, the chairman of the group British Pensions in Australia, says many of those affected are having to return to the UK.
"I know a 96-year-old lady who's on a full pension of £17 a week from the UK. Come April, it should be £122 a week."
The Australian Government fills part of the gap by paying pensions to many British expatriates who qualify under the country’s means-tested system.
Tilley estimates this costs the Australian taxpayer $1 billion over four years.
While the British policy dates back to the 1960s, the issue has emerged againwith Brexit.
Older Britons living in Spain fear losing the automatic indexation they've received through membership of the European Union.
But many lobbyists see Brexit as a chance for change, urging Australia to raise the issue in future negotiations for a bilateral Free Trade Agreement with Britain.
Tilley can see another way to apply pressure.
"The British Government should be told that the trade negotiation skills that they're asking Australia to assist them with should be conditional upon Britain indexing the pensions of all British pensioners living abroad, particularly the 250,000 living here in Australia,” he said.
Australia has long opposed the frozen pensions policy and in 2001 protested by quitting a reciprocal Social Security arrangement with Britain.
A spokesman for Social Services Minister Christian Porter has called the policy "unfair and discriminatory".
However, a British Member of Parliament, Peter Lilley - recently in Australia to discuss Brexit and trade opportunities - says the issue was never mentioned in discussions with Trade Minister Steve Ciobo.
"I'll be perfectly frank," he told a business function in Sydney.
"The people who'll benefit don't have votes. And if we have £500,000, that's likely to go on people who do have votes.
“And that's just a simple fact of life. I know it's unfair but you've gone to a wonderful country, and you will prosper mightily here.
“I'm afraid, to look back to the mother country and hope that we'll be generous and fair is an unwise hope."
Share



