The monthly comment - The Migration of the OAPs

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The UK Government statistics on benefits reveal a wealth of information about the payments to Old Age Pensioners across the World. You can access it via the following link...... http://83.244.183.180/100pc/tabtool.html

You need to click onto the line Benefits/Scheme and select. With a little practice you can get the hang of how to use this ‘Tabulation Tool’. Although the information is fascinatingly extensive, the Winter Fuel Payments are absent.  Further the information only exists since 2002.

Since 2002 the proportion of OAPs leaving the UK has increased year by year so that the total % living abroad has risen from 8.2% in 2002 to 9.3% in 2009. In all 31,660 OAPs moved abroad in 2008/9. About 57% of those migrating last year went to live in Europe, and there were fairly large contingents also to the expected English speaking countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA (which at 3,260 was the largest receiver of all in the world outside Europe). One thousand more was added to the statistic of ‘Abroad – not known’ location.

Within Europe the number moving to Spain averages about 6,700 a year [see further note below]. To France about 4,300 a year. The number in both countries has more than doubled in seven years. The greatest annual % increase is to Bulgaria and also Greece (but since numbers are low such a statistic is unhelpful in any analysis).

The number of male and female OAPs in each country reveals some interesting figures (see further below). In Spain in 2009 there were 16,110 more females receiving the OAP than males. In France the figure is 9,550. The proportion of women to men is however lower than in the UK, though quite extraordinarily it is much higher in Germany where there are more female British OAPs as male in every age group and twice as many overall!

Click on the images to enlatge them.
 What do these figures tell us?

1. That increasingly, little by little, the elderly population prefer not to live in the UK.

Why? This ought to be an issue discussed by the politicians.

2. The excess of women over men is largely explained by the fact that the age group of men between 60 - 64 is not recorded. Over the age of 80 there is a increasing excess of females. There is a considerable number of very elderly women probably living alone amongst the OAPs in France and Spain. These women are less likely to be ‘worldly-wise’. They are probably not computer literate. This group is most likely not to bother with the issues of the Winter Fuel Payment (and almost certainly do not receive it!), or the vote, or be aware of this blog site.
There are 32,320 OAPs over eighty in Europe excluding the UK and Ireland. 
Over ninety there are 3,430.
Excess of very elderly women v. men:-  over eighty, by 10,760 - over ninety  by 1,270 (37%).

If we add in an equal number of men as there are of women in the 60-64 age bracket, then the numbers of elderly over 60 for France increase by 10,000 and the numbers for Spain 16,000.
FURTHER:- anecdotal evidence supported by unofficial estimates would suggest that in Spain and France there are large numbers of OAPs who spend the winter in those countries.  Probably some numbers spend more than 6 months a year outside the UK, though claiming permanent residence in the UK.  In the Alicante region alone it is claimed that the true  "winter" resident numbers of UK OAPs is about 180,000, vastly in excess of the official count. This practice is driving a cart through the regulations. These quasi residents are probably receiving the WFP ; paying taxes in the UK; and perhaps saving the UK some funding on the NHS.  This is a muddle which needs attention - but NOT the clunking iron fist of regulatory power!

Please write to your MP or a Minister or any political leader or otherwise and ask......

"What interest is your next Government going to take in the Welfare of the British pensioner who lives in the European Union." [The wider EU is today a new political force which enfolds the diffuse responsibilities of all its member States. Any citizen of any State should have the continuing respect and oversight of the member State of which they are a birthright national. The right to representation. The right to enjoy the privileges of their national state. The right to be free from discrimination in any form. A further posting exists discussing this point. click to view.]  Please use your vote (if you can have one!)

You might well refer to this blog and add anything else that is personally relevant to yourself.

What is Europe? An Essay

There has never before been a political structure like Europe. You reply – What about the USA? But the USA grew by conquest, western expansion and purchase. The original thirteen colonies united together to throw off the British yoke, yet barely eighty years later tore themselves apart in a bloody civil war and then united again, tied together with bloody bandages. Before and after the civil war, new States were carved out of the new territories to the west of the Eastern thirteen. In Australia, which is another federation, various States came to be established, each in its way going back to British colonial settlements.

Europe is not like that. It consists of ancient States, most with their own language and some with several languages. Each has its own variation on the European culture, which has as a base the Christian ethic. Each has it own slant on the intra-European wars and conflicts (frequently religious!) and intra-European trade which have shaped these countries through the past centuries and which have culminated, after the disastrous conflicts of the first half of the 20th century in the desire to associate to end these conflicts for ever.

Still in Europe each country looks warily at the others with some mistrust. The various governments and political parties of Britain, more than any other, mistrust the rest.

The political structures which bind the nations of Europe together are considered as much chains of imprisonment as they are links of friendship and co-operation. Our minds are not tuned in to this new concept of political association. The political mind either goes down the line of fusion or the line of confrontation. The result is a mind full of confusion. Our thinking needs to become accustomed to a new condition.

We need a new term and a new concept in the mind for this relationship. Let us call it an Association. It is a network of nations. As with a railway network each town is independent but depends on the others. As with the nervous system, each part functions in relation to the other parts. There are nodal masses of cells and each node relates to other nodes via the nerves. In the network of nations which is Europe each depends on the others and yet retains its identity. Vibrant impulses throughout the network would energise the whole.

As the network develops there is movement of the peoples from one node or nation to the others. Here we must move away from our analogy. Each person retains some relationship to his nation of origin and the government of the nation of his origin should acknowledge some link to the diaspora of its people throughout the network.

Most of the nations of Europe maintain this two-way link between the country of origin and its dispersed nationals. But the link is indeed a two-way function. The individual is a human being with the power of choice and freedom of action. The National Government is not however a sentient being, it is an organisation which exists for the benefit of its citizens. The citizens are not servants of the State Government…The Government is the servant of the citizens. The individual is free to separate himself from his Nationality of birth but the National Government cannot, without good moral cause, separate itself from the citizen. So if an individual chooses to cut the bonds of citizenship and link himself to another Nation (or indeed becomes Stateless, with no doubt rather severe consequences) then he perhaps has the right to do so. Until an individual does that, then the Government of the people has a duty to care for and to listen to the citizen wherever he may live. The British Government morally, on the one hand, cannot disenfranchise or ignore its citizens because they have moved within Europe, and on the other hand maintain that it is playing its part within the European Association.

In this ever widening network of Europe the links to the citizen of any Nation State should be maintained. Each Nation State has a duty to represent its citizens in all the other States of the network and each citizen should be represented in his own Nation State. It is the citizens who are the nerve pulses of the network. But one’s experience tells us that the British State adopts a ‘fortress Britain’ attitude and has no interest in the nerve network through the Association. None of the British political parties expresses any true interest in the citizen in Europe. The political elite of Britain alone in Europe among the larger nations, treats its European diaspora as self-imposed outcasts, rather than as witnesses to British culture and ambassadors of the nation. Yet at the level of human contact, the interplay  between  individuals cements and enhances Europe.  We who live in Europe know this to be a self-evident truth.
[This item is frequently visited from all parts of the World - interestingly large numbers of people living in Kiev, Ukraine have visited it. Another large number live in the Philippines.  I would be delighted to know the reason,  contact   lefourquet@gmail.com]

The Concerns of the Blog

To return or go to the start of the blog click here

The Four Concerns of this blog are
Click on each title to reveal further links!
(1) Freedom of Movement.
Including Health Matters 
Here is any topic that affects our movement between the UK and the Continent. Removal of financial constraints on pensioners, removal of illegal constraints on travel, payments of benefits, Winter Fuel Payment, passport payments etc.
(2) Political Representation .
So that someone in Parliament truly has our welfare as his/her major concern.
(3) The Double Taxation Convention.
To sort out the tax mess which currently exists.

(4) Stabilisation of the pound (£) versus the euro €

One needs to know where one is with one's money. Updated with a comment on the £ v. Euro October 13th

******

Latest letter of December 2nd 2009 to HMRC LONDON

To go to the start of this blog click here

This is a slightly abridged version of the original - informants and copies not disclosed. (n.b. - when first published here, this item carried, by accident, an inappropriate date of 2012 - our apologies!)

To:-
Mr. Richard Thomas,
Tax Treaty Team, 100, Parliament Street, London, SW1A 2BQ
December 2nd 2009

Dear Mr. Thomas,

I wrote to you on July 20th a detailed letter and you courteously acknowledged that letter on the 4th August, saying that I would receive a fuller reply in due course. I still await that reply.

The letter of July 20th has a background essentially of the old Convention (DTC) (UK/France) then and now in part at least, still in force. It also refers to the new DTC of 2008.

Nothing materially has changed but I have been pursuing the case.

You must be aware that I have presented a Petition before the EU Committee on Petitions, who have acknowledged my petition and I await further news in that regard. The details of that petition can be read on my blogsite. I pray that when you do so, you take cognisance of the situation, mentioned in the petition, where if all income were taxed in France I could derive benefits from the tax rebates on employment of a home help and contributions to a French Charity to support the education of a boy in Cambodia. Because of the interpretation of the DTC these rebates are denied to me, since the income tax is paid to the UK!.

For all these reasons my total tax bill is somewhere about 1,000 euros higher than it would be for a Frenchman in the same circumstances.

In the meanwhile....

I have been in correspondence with an international tax specialist with regard to the French interpretation of the taxation procedures in the proposed 2008 Convention.

The Articles of the New Double Taxation Convention mentioned above are in spirit identical to the same Articles of the previous Convention (1968 No. 1869) The outcome is little different from that which I have previously stated. Nevertheless I am informed that the French are likely under DTC 2008 to calculate the tax due in a slightly different manner. I suspect that the situation thereby actually worsens for the British Government Pensioner.

[Calculation on income which includes UK Government Pensions].

Gov pensions = A, UK Tax = B

Any French income (or other foreign source income which is taxable in France) = C

French tax is calculated on A+C = D

French tax attributable to A = (A / (A+C)) x D = E

French tax payable is D minus E. [note that it is the attributable tax which is deducted in the calculation, not the actual tax paid! ]

Clearly and it is irrefutable logic - if B minus E is greater than zero ( UK tax less the French attributable tax) then the British National tax payer pays more tax overall than if he was a French National.

Further and again the logic is irrefutable; if a French National had EXACTLY the same career history as myself and therefore the same income and sources of income - then he would pay less tax than myself.

This situation infringes ARTICLE 25 (paragraph 1) on non-discrimination which I repeat here:

Individuals who are nationals of a Contracting State shall not be subjected to any taxation or any requirement connected therewith, which is other or more burdensome than the taxation and connected requirements to which nationals of that other State in the same circumstances, in particular with regard to residence, are or may be subjected.

The case is absolutely clear.

Now again I repeat to you Article 26. 1.

Where a resident of a Contracting State considers that the actions of one or both of the Contracting States result or will result for him in taxation not in accordance with the provisions of this convention, he may, irrespective of the remedies provided by the domestic law of those States, present his case to the competent authority of the State of which he is resident, OR IF HIS CASE COMES UNDER PARAGRAPH 1 OF ARTICLE 25, TO THAT OF THE CONTRACTING STATE OF WHICH HE IS A NATIONAL.

I have written three times (third time by recorded delivery) to M. Comolet-Tirman [your counterpart] in Paris and have had no reply to any of them. This is also mentioned in my petition to the EU as is my correspondence to yourself.

You are the competent authority of which I am a national.

I have in my EU petition proposed two alternative solutions.

1. To remove in France all calculation relating to the British Government pensions taxable in the UK under OECD recommendations in the French tax calculations - as is the case in Spain and probably other EU countries.

or

2. To remove all necessity to tax the Government pensions of British residents in France in the UK, thus causing them to be taxable in France.

I repeat to you, Mr. Thomas, that it is the bounden responsibility under International Law for the British Government to uphold the interests of me, a British Citizen, and to intervene with France to correct this unfairness and irregularity. I demand, with the right of a British Citizen, that action is taken.

I give you official notice in this mail of my contention as required under Article 26.1 of the convention.

Copies of this mail to;- not disclosed here

Brian Cave

Circulated Message from Roger Gale M.P. on DLA payments

This message from Roger Gale MP has been sent to all MPs with constituents concerned about the non payment of Disability Living Allowance.

Exportable Benefits - update
As a colleague with a constituent interest in the issue of exportable benefits I felt that I should circulate the present position.

Infringement proceedings against the UK Government for breach of the ECJ ruling were issued at the beginning of October.

The Commission does not accept the "26/52" ruling in relation to qualification.

I still await the Prime Minister’s promised written answer to my oral PQ and subsequent letter.

The government has declined, on grounds of confidentiality, to publish its response to the EU.

Some 2000 (we believe) former elderly and disabled former UK residents and taxpayers are awaiting payment of the benefits due to them.

It would appear that appeal hearings, long-delayed, have now been put on hold pending (1) a resolution of the infringement proceedings and (2) the subsequent hearing of a basket of test cases.

All of which is not very satisfactory!

Yours ever

Roger Gale, MP
North Thanet