DWP State Pension freeze explained: Half a million pensioners won't get promised £460 boost next year

The triple lock mechanism was originally introduced by the coalition government in 2011 to shield pensioners from inflation by promising to raise the state pension every year by the highest figure between inflation, wage increases and 2.5%. However, many pensioners haven’t been able to get a single one of these increase.

This is because their state pension is frozen for those who decide to spend their golden years abroad. The 500,000 Britons aged 66 and older currently living overseas won’t see a penny of the £460 state pension rise due next April because of this.

One British pensioner, Sheila Wills, spoke to The Telegraph from her home in South Africa, where her family settled after living all over the continent during her husband’s 40-year career in British overseas development aid. Her husband died in 2016 and her sole source of income is his British state pension she inherited, amounting to just £67 a week.

She receives no other help from the UK or South African government and is struggling to make ends meet. The 87-year-old revealed that her husband was never advised that his pension would be frozen if he decided to retire in another country without a reciprocal agreement.

She shared: “My husband and I were of the generation that were born pre-war, we lived through the shortages, dangers and deprivations of the war years and were then the generation that went to work, to once again build Britain…I am now a widow, trying to survive on a pension that was considerably reduced after the death of my husband.”

These pensioners are urging the Prime Minister to reverse the “totally immoral” policy that denies them from having an annual increase. The rule was first put in place in 1955, before some of the pensioners now