The Government has been forced by the European Court to allow some disabled people who move to another European country to take their disability benefits with them. In the past most disability benefits could not be taken with you if you went to live abroad. But now if you go to live in most other European countries you can take three disability benefits with you. They are 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 normal 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 in the box 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 £4000 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 no longer 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 carers benefit in the UK and then move to one of the 31 countries. The Government is still working out if the judgement of the European Court also means that people living in one of those 31 countries can claim their disability or carers benefit for the first time from abroad. Until the Government has clarified the judgement it is not allowing claims from people already abroad.

One strange anomaly is that France includes its overseas territories Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, Réunion in the Indian Ocean tropics and French Guiana on the equatorial coast of South America. The winter fuel payment can be paid in these countries where December temperatures are typically 25-30^oC. 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 the winter fuel payment cannot be made there.

The 2008/09 Winter Fuel 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 countries as long as they have already been paid a winter fuel payment at least once in the UK.

Incapacity benefit
If you become too ill or disabled to work then you can get incapacity benefit as long as you have paid enough National Insurance contributions. If you go to live elsewhere in Europe then 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 a benefit called Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). And from 2010 to 2013 everyone on Incapacity Benefit will be re-assessed and moved onto ESA. It will be a more complex benefit but part of it will be paid on the basis of National Insurance contributions and you will be able to take that part to any of the 31 European countries.

State Pension
The state retirement pension (and weekly widow’s and bereavement benefits) can be paid abroad 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. That means 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 to people in the UK.

The retirement pension and bereavement benefits are frozen in every country except the 31 European countries and another 20 states in the second box below. So they are frozen in major destinations such as Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, and South Africa.

THIRTY-ONE 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.

TWENTY OTHER STATES WHERE RETIREMENT PENSION AND WEEKLY BEREAVEMENT BENEFITS ARE UPRATED
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, United States of America. In the Falkland Islands UK pensions are paid at the frozen rate but the local legislative Council tops them up to the level that would have been paid in the UK.