I retired to Thailand but my UK state pension was frozen – now I’m struggling

British pensioners in Thailand say that despite a lower cost of living in the Asian country, the UK Government’s decades-long “frozen” state pension policy is making life a struggle for thousands of people who have retired overseas.

John Jones, 77, left the UK in 1986 and has jetted all over the world through his work in international sales and marketing. Originally from Maidstone in Kent, he settled in Thailand in 1998 and now lives in a farming community near the northern city of Udon Thani, drawn by the charming landscape of rice fields, forests and hills and the simple way of life.

When Mr Jones retired in 2011, he was entitled to just under £75 a week in state pension. It has been frozen at that amount ever since.

“With the cost of living going up, what used to buy you groceries 13 years ago you can’t get half of that now,” he told i. “We have to budget and there’s no savings as such, I mean, it’s impossible.

“It’s a hardship, but I scrape through. I give my wife every penny of my pension and go nowhere and do nothing, I’m just a vegetable.”

“I am not in the best of health,” Mr Jones added, explaining that he suffers from a heart condition and has to regularly take tablets, which is an added expense.

Britons in Thailand do not receive the increase to state pension every year in line with whichever is highest out of wage growth, inflation or 2.5 per cent, known as the triple lock. This is because Thailand, among many other countries outside of Europe, does not have a reciprocal social security agreement with the UK.

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As of March 2022, there were around 480,000 people receiving the UK state pension in countries that do not get increases, according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Frozen Pensions found that more than 95 per cent of these pensioners live in Commonwealth countries, most in Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand.

While Thailand is far more affordable than the UK, Mr Jones said he worries about his family’s future. His wife, Pin Bunpah, 39, does not work – she would earn “peanuts” if she did – and cares for him and their seven-year-old son, Leo, full time.

“I worry about the funeral costs, it’s about £2,000 [for a cremation]. Well, I haven’t got that money, so the inheritance I am going to leave my wife is a debt, which I am not proud of,” Mr Jones said.

He believes receiving the annual increase pensioners do in the UK would relieve some of the burden his family faces, but said “the appetite and the attitude [of the Government] towards pensioners abroad at the moment is zero”.

He has contemplated leaving Thailand, but having been away from the UK for nearly four decades, Mr Jones said his family, friends and “everything that I’ve come to accept and appreciate is here”.

“It’s awful to say but you begin to think, is life worth it? Because at the end of the day we’re not put on this earth just to survive,” he added. “To move to a country that gets the [state pension] increases, i.e. the Philippines, and to live there and not be with my family, that’s even worse than not even having a pension.”

Jeffrey Barnes, also 77, from Offham, Kent, left the UK in 2012 and moved to Spain, from where he regularly travelled to Thailand for several months a year. After meeting his now-wife Lampoon Barnes, 54, he decided to permanently move to Thailand to see out his golden years in paradise.

“I’m looking out now into a garden, which is more a forest, and it’s full of mango trees, and the mangoes are ripe. It’s perfect,” he told i from Nong Bua Phu in Thailand’s north-east.

Mr Barnes’s state pension has been frozen at £202 a week after he retired aged 65, but he acknowledges that he is not struggling financially due to his private pension from his years working as an industrial engineer, which bumps his monthly income to about 80,000 Thai baht, or £1,700 a month.

Jeffrey Barnes moved to Thailand to be with his wife, Lampoon (Photo: Jeffrey Barnes)

“That can be a little bit tight,” he said. “If you need to buy something, for example, the car needs replacing, even a set of tyres could cost 30,000 baht, that’s 40 per cent of our pension.

“Food is cheap and the cost of living is cheap, but I paid an expensive electricity bill today, 5,000 baht which is £110, I know it’s nothing compared to what UK people pay.

“But my private pension will not increase, it’s a fixed amount.”

He pointed to how “unfair” the frozen pension policy was, saying British pensioners were being penalised for retiring abroad.

“There’s no logic to what they do,” he said of the UK Government. “I started work when I was 16, and I stopped when I was 65, I was never out of work, I paid my national insurance and tax all the time. Why shouldn’t I get it [the state pension increase]?

“Then I read that they’re spending £400m to send people [asylum seekers] to Rwanda, just makes me bloody angry.”

Linz Gelthorpe, 55, and his wife, Julie, 61, moved to Nong Prue near Pattaya city in eastern Thailand in October, with their dog, Bess. Their decision was partly prompted by Mr Gelthorpe suffering a serious medical condition five years ago, and them wanting to be near their children and grandchildren in Australia.

When the couple found out their state pension would be frozen just months before their flight to Thailand, it was too late to cancel their plans.

Linz Gelsthorpe with his wife, Julie, moved to Thailand in October (Photo: Linz Gelsthorpe)

For now, they are using Mr Gelthorpe’s private pension to cover costs, which he believes will last them about 15 years.

“That will run out,” he told i. “We are not worried [about our future] but we are consciously aware of it, and trying to do things now to mitigate that.”

He joins thousands of pensioners across the globe calling for reform on this issue, with many comparing it to the Post Office scandal.

“It’s disgraceful and disgusting,” said Mr Gelthorpe. “This is bigger than the party that’s in power… they stick their head in the sand, same as when they did with the Post Office scandal. They think it will go away.”

The Government-owned Post Office wrongly prosecuted more than 700 subpostmasters between 1999 and 2015, in one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK legal history, dramatised in the ITV programme Mr Bates vs The Post Office.

A DWP spokesperson said: “Our priority is ensuring every pensioner receives the financial support to which they are entitled.

“We understand that people move abroad for many reasons and we provide clear information on gov.uk about how this can impact their finances.

“The Government’s policy on the uprating of the UK State Pension for recipients living overseas is a longstanding one of more than 70 years and we continue to uprate State Pensions overseas where there is a legal requirement to do so.”