I get just £17 a week UK pension after moving to Australia – it feels like abuse

Rosemary Godfrey marked her milestone 90th birthday this year with a big family party and a red, white and blue cake made by her granddaughter.

But while she is looking forward to the future, some things are very much stuck in the past.

Thirty years on from when she first claimed her UK state pension in 1994, she is still getting exactly the same amount of money.

The cost of living has soared but Mrs Godfrey receives just £17.22 a week. She told i: “It’s the same now, it hasn’t gone up by even one penny.

“It was frozen from the day I claimed it. It’s out of sight, out of mind from the British Government.”

The 90-year-old former teacher sees the ‘frozen’ pension rule as discrimination

Financially for her, she says “it’s a case of managing.”

“I don’t drink, I don’t smoke and I don’t gamble,” she said, “I have never been ashamed to go to the op shops [charity shops] and I have shopped in the sales all my life.”

She says she tries not to worry about money because that would be “disastrous” but she does feel a keen sense of injustice.

“It is discrimination,” she said, “if I lived in America we would get it.

“I thought the British Government didn’t discriminate against race, colour or creed?”

She added: “Out here there’s a lot of talk these days about elder abuse, I liken it to that. They are withholding our money – that’s elder abuse, isn’t it?”

Mrs Godfrey’s pension has not increased in line with inflation because Australia does not have a reciprocal agreement with the UK. Originally from Farnham in Surrey, she worked as an infant school teacher for 11 years before moving abroad.

She emigrated in 1965, married the following year and eventually settled in Canberra.

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She returned to teaching after having her family, working as supply teacher and then a reading specialist in schools in Australia, but did not qualify for state pension in Australia.

When she reached the age of 60 in 1994, she started to claim the UK state pension she was entitled to through her work as a teacher in Surrey.

But Mrs Godfrey’s pension does not rise annually in line with the triple lock system, which ensures UK state pensions rise in line with the rate of inflation, average earnings or 2.5 per cent, whichever is highest.

She is one of around 228,000 UK pensioners living in Australia and about 492,000 worldwide who have been affected by living in countries with no agreement with Britain over state pensions.

She has long campaigned for British pensioners living abroad to have the same pension rights as their counterparts resident in the UK and was part of a delegation which took a case to the European Court of Human Rights in April 2009.

“I said I’m not doing it for me, I’m doing it for over 200,000 people in Australia in my position,” she said. “It is unfair.”

The case, which claimed UK pensioners living abroad had been discriminated against and should have the right to equal treatment in respect of their pension, was originally heard in the High Court but eventually ended up in the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights where it was decided there had been no discrimination.

Undeterred, Mrs Godfrey says she hopes whoever forms a new government after the 4 July general election will “get off their backsides, sign a bill and get it organised.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said it provides information on its website about how moving abroad can impact people’s finance.