I am very disappointed, considering your earlier charges of my rudeness to you, to note that you have so far failed to have the decency to reply to my last email dated 14th September. Your Institute appears to be charged with the role of effectively being a "think tank" upon future  pension provision. Your lack of willingness to offer any response to date seems to suggest that your Institute appears to have a policy of not wanting to enter dialogue upon pension issues with third parties. Can you enlighten me as to whether or not this is your Institute´s Policy?

 

The reason I contacted you initially is simply because our Association has a deep and vested interest in pension provision for ExPats. As you are well aware no such reference was made on the BBC web site to the lengthy article attributed to you. You specifically referred to basing future pension awards on the basis of residency to the exclusion of N.I contributions. By inference that excluded any consideration of ExPats pension provision.

 

In your email you comment that "...You seem to have leapt to the conclusion that we have not taken into account the situation of ex-pats...". This was of course totally accurate - but why should it be otherwise, if it is proposed future provision of pensions is to be based upon residency in the UK? Your further commented that "...we have fully considered the issue of freedom of movement..." a somewhat meaningless statement, Ms O´Connell - if not quantified. You could have, for example, fully considered that very issue and then chose to discount its merit. You also stated "... when you give more than a brief read to the full report ..." We would be more than pleased to do so but there was no reference to any full report, in the BBC article, or reference to where it could be found. Perhaps you could advise where we can read it so that we might enter sensible and constructive debate.

 

The purpose of this email is simple.

 

Please consider this email to be a FORMAL request to enter dialogue with your Institute. It is also to send you an attachment, as promised, which is a copy of EU regulations pertaining to ExPat pensions. In summary it states that a State cannot discriminate on pension provision on the grounds that a person no longer lives in the country from which the pension is paid. I apologise that it is not very legible - the full file size was huge when scanned and I have reduced it to make it more manageable for transmission to you. We would be more than happy to post you better quality documentation to assist our cause if requested.

 

As you know we have a well read web site and I shall be more than happy to place all our correspondence - in its entirety - for all to read both here in Spain and the United Kingdom. 

 

I hope to receive a favourable reply at your earliest convenience.

 

Regards

 

 

Peter Woodall

Co-founder British ExPats Association (Spain)