State pension bombshell as 453,000 people ‘underpaid’ in one year | Personal Finance | Finance
Nearly 500,000 Brits who live abroad did not receive their full State Pension, new figures suggest. DWP data indicated that around 1.1million people received the State Pension while residing overseas in August 2025, but around 453,000 of these lived in a country without a reciprocal agreement with the UK Government.
This treaty ensures that if you retire abroad in certain countries, the UK State Pension increases every year in line with the UK’s triple lock. This includes places such as New Zealand, Jersey and Guernsey. However, for Brits living in non-qualifying countries, such as Canada and Australia, the pensions remain frozen at the rate that was first claimed when they left the UK, even if someone has paid National Insurance for their whole working life.
Campaign group End Frozen Pensions has been in a long battle with the UK Government, calling on them to honour triple lock for pensioners abroad.
They warned that nearly four in 10 pensioners had to cut down on essential items such as food and medicine as a result of the policy, following their survey results. Campaigners claimed that some pensioners were receiving as little as £20 a week.
The group said that 86% of expats were unaware of the freeze before they moved abroad, and of the 453,000 estimated retirees, more than 60,000 were veterans.
This included Anne Puckridge, a 100-year-old World War II veteran who worked until she was 76, before moving to Canada to be closer to her family. The group said last year she received less than half the amount she would have earned in the UK.
The new full State Pension is worth £241.30 a week after it was uprated by 4.8% in April 2026 in line with average earnings.
Ms Puckridge met Pensions Minister Emma Reynolds in December 2024, after her request to see Sir Keir Starmer was turned down due to “pressures on his diary”.
However, the war veteran said she was left “bitterly disappointed” and “disgusted”, and that she believed Ms Reynolds’ mind had been “made up before we even started the meeting”.
A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said at the time it provided “clear information on how this can impact their finances in retirement” and the policy of uprating pensions abroad had been “longstanding”.
