Julia Gillard’s parents have joined a fight to get Britain’s “unjust” frozen pensions policy abolished. So will the prime minister raise the issue with her British counterpart?

John and Moria Gillard are among the members of the British Pensions in Australia (BPiA) organisation which has been fighting for years to get the UK’s frozen pensions policy overturned. The organisation has emailed Gillard to ask her to raise the matter with British PM David Cameron during her trip to London for the royal wedding.

“You ought to be aware that this unjust treatment applies to your own parents too who have chosen to join our organisation to help fund our campaign for social justice,” BPiA chairman Jim Tilley writes.

The frozen pensions policy penalises contributors to Britain’s mandatory pension scheme, the National Insurance Fund, who chose to spend their retirement years in Australia and over 100 other, mostly Commonwealth and former Commonwealth, nations. Their pensions are not uprated each year in line with inflation.

The BPiA organisation points out that as a result of the policy many contributors to the fund have not had a pension increase since they began to draw their British aged pensions in Australia 20 years ago.  The full basic UK weekly pension was then £52 ($A79) a week.  It is now almost twice that amount: £102 ($A156).

Tilley has repeatedly noted that victims of the policy include Australians who contributed to the mandatory fund while spending part of their working lives in the UK.  Those penalised also include British migrants, like Gillard’s parents, who contributed to the mandatory fund for many years before settling in Australia.

It’s understood that some migrants topped up their contributions after emigration in order to provide for a comfortable old age. Yet many were later to complain that although the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions encouraged their contributions from abroad, the department failed to warn them about the frozen pensions policy.

Tilley has often suggested that a private pension fund would soon be run out of business if it penalised contributors simply because they opted to retire to certain countries.  He points out that the frozen pensions policy does not adversely affect contributors who retire to most non-Commonwealth nations.

Over the years, attempts by BPiA and associated British pensioner lobby groups around the world have failed to get the UK policy rescinded in the courts.

As a result of the policy, many British retirees in Australia have become dependent on a supplementary Centrelink pension. The cost to the Australian taxpayer is currently about $110 million a year.

For decades successive Australian prime ministers and foreign ministers have failed in their quest to get their UK counterparts to relieve Australia of this expense. But unlike Gillard, no previous Australian prime minister has had pensioner parents who are among the thousands of retirees who are fighting for equal pension rights for all those who contributed to the UK’s mandatory pension fund.

Tilley says “a win for us 250,000 voters, if you can persuade a change of heart by Britain in this matter, could be beneficial to the ALP at the next federal general election”.

Crikey has sought comment from Gillard’s office but they did not respond by deadline.

“We are fully aware that this is an issue which falls within the portfolio of your minister, Jenny Macklin, who is totally aware that BPiA is determined and dedicated to continue working and fighting for our eventual success in this issue, but we also believe with your help and using your famed negotiating skills this week, these could be of value to us in this campaign,” Tilley wrote.