Paul Lewis
In the past, most disability benefits could not be taken with you but now if you decide to live in most other European countries you can take three benefits with you. They are the Disability Living Allowance – but only the care component, not the mobility component, Attendance Allowance and Carer’s Allowance.
You have to continue to fulfil the usual conditions to get the allowance while you are abroad. Carers must continue to care for someone for at least 35 hours a week who gets UK Attendance Allowance or Disability Living Allowance at the middle or highest rate. Normally that will mean they are both abroad in the same country.
There is another condition that has to be fulfilled. You must be what is called an “insured person” – in other words someone who is covered by the UK National Insurance system. The easiest way to do that is to get retirement or widow’s pension (or any weekly bereavement benefit). You will also qualify if you get long-term incapacity benefit, which can be exported to European countries.
If you get one of those then you can move to one of 31 European countries listed below and continue to get the disability or carer’s allowance as long as you qualify for them on disability or caring grounds.
You can also be counted as an insured person if you have paid enough National Insurance contributions in the two tax years before the calendar year in which you claim the benefit abroad. In 2008 that would mean you had paid National Insurance contributions on just over £4,000 of earnings in 2005/06 and 2006/07. You will also qualify if you are the spouse, civil partner or dependent child of a person who has paid enough contributions. However, once you are abroad you can no longer pay the necessary contributions. So as time passes you will not have fulfilled the conditions within the past two years and will no longer be an ‘insured person’. At that point the disability or carer’s allowance will stop.
Claiming when abroad
The new rules apply to people who claim the disability or carer’s benefit in the UK and then move abroad. The Government is still working out if the judgment of the European Court means that people already living in one of those 31 countries can claim disability or carer’s benefit for the first time from abroad. Until the Government has decided on this it is not allowing claims from people already abroad.
Winter fuel payment
Similar rules apply to the Winter Fuel Payment. It cannot be claimed for the first time from abroad but it will be paid abroad to someone who has successfully claimed it in the UK before moving to one of the 31 European countries.
One anomaly is that France includes its overseas territories Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, Réunion in the Indian Ocean tropics and French Guiana in South America. The payment can be paid in these countries where December temperatures are typically 25-30°C. It can also be paid in Spain’s Canary Islands, Ibiza and Majorca as well as the Portuguese Azores and Madeira islands. They are all in the EU. However, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are not part of the UK nor of the EU and payment cannot be made there.
The 2008/09 payment will be higher: £250 for a household where someone is aged 60-79 and £400 where someone is aged 80 or more. That higher amount will be paid to people in the European states as long as they have already received a payment at least once in the UK.
To qualify for the payment in 2008 you must be aged at least 60 on September 21, 2008 and in 2009 the qualifying date is September 27. From winter 2010/11 the age to qualify will be raised from 60 in line with women’s state pension age. In winter 2010/11 it will apply to people born before July 6, 1950 and for winter 2011/12 it will be paid to people born before January 6, 1951.
Most people are paid automatically but those who are not – particularly men under 65 – have to claim. The deadline is March 30 after the winter. So it is too late to claim for last winter. Claims for winter 2008 can be made from July.
Incapacity benefit
If you become too ill or disabled to work you can get incapacity benefit as long as you have paid enough NI contributions. If you go to live elsewhere in Europe you can take your incapacity benefit with you as long as you continue to fulfil the medical conditions for getting it.
In October, incapacity benefit will be replaced for new claimants by the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). And from 2010 to 2013 everyone on incapacity benefit will be reassessed and moved on to ESA. It will be a more complex benefit but part of it will be paid on the basis of NI contributions and you will be able to take that part to any of the 31 European states below.
State pension
The state retirement pension (and weekly widow’s and bereavement benefits) can be paid anywhere in the world. And they can be claimed by people who are already living abroad. However, in most countries of the world these benefits are paid at a frozen rate. They are not increased each April in line with UK inflation and remain at the rate first paid to the person in that country – either when they reached pension age there or when they moved there with their pension. So someone who moved to one of those countries in the summer of 1988 would still get a state pension paid at the April 1988 rate of £41.15 a week rather than the £90.70 currently paid in the UK.
The retirement pension and bereavement benefits are frozen in every country except the 31 European countries and the other 20 states below, so they are frozen in countries such as Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Africa.
Where you can take your payments
These are the 31 states that count as 'Europe' for exporting some benefits. EU: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden. EEA: Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein. Others: Gibraltar, Switzerland.
There are 20 other states where retirement pension and weekly bereavement benefits are uprated. They are: Alderney, Barbados, Bermuda, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Guernsey (includes Herm, Jethou, Lihou), Isle of Man, Israel, Jamaica, Jersey, Kosovo, Mauritius, Macedonia, Montenegro, Philippines, Sark (includes Brecqhou), Serbia, Turkey, USA.
In the Falkland Islands UK pensions are paid at the frozen rate but the local Legislative Council tops them up to the UK rate.
* This article first appeared in the June 2008 edition of Saga Magazine.
* Paul Lewis is the editor of Magazine's Money News section and the presenter of BBC Radio 4's Moneybox. Paul's opinions are his own and for general information only. Always seek independent financial advice.