Christopher Chope – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Christopher Chope on 2015-11-06.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 2 November 2015 to Question 13950, what the estimated annual shortfall is in the payment of pensions to former employees of the Southern Rhodesian government.

James Duddridge

As my Rt Hon Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps MP), Minister of State at the Department for International Development, set out last week, the Government sympathises with the plight of those former public servants who are entitled to a Zimbabwe government pension. We have not calculated the amounts involved because the UK has no legal obligation or responsibility for these. Responsibility rests with the Zimbabwean government. We continue to remind the relevant authorities in Zimbabwe of this legal commitment.