British expats will have to prove they are still alive and kicking if they want to carry on receiving their state pensions.
In yet another move making life harder for expats claiming the state pension, Chancellor George Osborne wants them to provide regular proof of life certificates.
The Department of Work and Pensions came up with the idea because officials fear too many expat families receive the state pension fraudulently after someone has died.
As a result, a Whitehall mandarin has decided that expat pensioners must supply life certificates to show they are not dead if they want to keep picking up their cheques from the government.
“The government will increase its activity on life certificates to ensure that state pension payments to pensioners living abroad are being made correctly, to shorten the period in which payment may continue erroneously after the person is deceased,” said a report in documents issued by the Chancellor giving more details of his autumn statement.
Life certificates
Around 14% of expat state pensioners have life certificates, which must be countersigned by an independent third party.
The rule only applies to countries that do not automatically exchange personal and financial information with Britain.
A Treasury official said: “We pay a bit of money to dead pensioners because we do not know they are dead or the information takes a good while to filter through. In most cases, the families keep the money because we have no jurisdiction to claim it back.”
Expat state pensioners have not fared well under government rulings in recent years.
In this autumn statement, many will lose their winter fuel payment from 2015 if the average winter temperature of the country where they live is warmer than the average winter temperature in Britain.
Unfair pension rules
Many expats claim the comparison is unfair because even in some warmer countries, the average temperature is colder than in Britain because of temperature extremes in mountain regions.
Last year, state pensioners lost the right to index-link their payments in many countries without a reciprocal pension agreement with Britain when the European Courts of Justice ruled against their case.
Thousands of expat pensioners are paid a fixed rate sum set at the amount of their first state pension payment.
In some cases, this is a meagre amount as a single person retiring in 1990 received £46.90 a week – if the payment was index linked, that would be worth £110.15 in December 2013, but is still £46.90 without cost of living increases added.
Quite right. The unemployed cant keep claiming unemployment benefit without regularly proving they are unemployed so pensioners should have to prove they are still alive. Why should families of dead people get state pensions?