FactCheck: ‘Benefit tourism’ scare sent packing
The claim
“What the EU is now trying to do is get us to provide benefits for those who come to this country with no intention to work and no other means of supporting themselves, with the sole purpose of accessing a more generous benefit system.”
Iain Duncan Smith, September 30 2011
The background
The threat of a legal challenge from the European Commission to Britain’s benefit rules has provoked a storm of anti-Brussels sentiment this week.
The EC says the UK is in breach of European law by insisting that citizens from other EU countries have to pass a tougher test to get hold of social security payouts than British citizens.
The government denies it is discriminating against our neighbours, says it resents this attempt to meddle in the UK’s affairs, and claims a change in the rules could cost the British taxpayer £2.5bn a year.
Two days before the Conservative party conference, Tory ministers seized on the opportunity for a unique double whammy – a chance to bash benefits cheats and meddling Eurocrats in the same breath.
The Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, sounded the charge in the Telegraph, saying the proposed changes “could mean the British taxpayer paying out over £2 billion extra a year in benefits to people who have no connection to our country and who have never paid in a penny in tax”.
Employment Minister Chris Grayling said: “It’s obviously right that we support those who work and pay their taxes here, but it’s clearly completely unacceptable that we should open our doors to benefit tourism.”
Critics have been equally outspoken, with the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) accusing the Government of being “irresponsible” and peddling “dangerous myth-making”.
The analysis
In 1994, the Conservative government decided that people who had recently arrive in Britain and wanted to claim benefits had to pass a habitual residence test.
Before being allowed to claim, immigrants were interviewed and asked a list of questions about their reasons for coming to the UK, their work status and history, how long they had been in Britain and their future intentions.
In 2004, when the addition of more countries to the EU was increasing fears of so-called “benefit tourism”, the rules were tightened up.
At whole host of awards like child benefit, child tax credit, state pension credit and unemployment support allowance were only paid to those with a “right to reside”.
UK nationals and, slightly bafflingly, people from the Republic of Ireland, are automatically granted that status.
But most people from elsewhere in the EU (except Ireland) have to be resident here for more than five years before they get access to the same benefits as a Briton, hence the EC’s accusation of discrimination.
Lawyers who work in the field say the discrimination is real and unfair.
Adam Weiss is the Assistant Director of the Advice on Individual Rights in Europe centre, who made the original complaint to the EC.
He says a single mother who wanted to start claiming benefits after living, working and paying taxes in the UK for three years probably would not get Income Support, whereas a British woman would – the only difference being one of nationality.
But is discrimination a price worth paying if it stops benefit tourists from flooding the country?
You might think from listening to ministers that, if the “right to reside” test is abolished, there will be nothing to hold back hordes of migrants heading for Dover in search of an easy life, courtesy of the taxpayer.
In fact, the habitual residence test would still be in place, and critics of the government say it is strong enough in itself to prevent benefit tourism.
Sarah Clarke, a solicitor who handles benefit cases for CPAG, said one of the key factors in whether you pass that test or not is how long you have been in the country before you make a claim.
In most cases, that means that you would have to be in this country for one to three months before you could expect to get any kind of handout.
So much for benefit “tourism”, if what that means is staying in the country for a short while and sponging off the state at the same time. Anyone who came here with that intention would find themselves with nothing to live on for months.
What about someone dreaming about a spending the rest of their life in the UK on benefits? Someone who might satisfy the habitual residence test in terms of their intention to live here, but has not intention of ever working for a living?
As Ms Clarke points out, the government has recently brought in a number of tough measures designed to weed out benefits shirkers.
Only a small number of economically inactive people, like single parents with very young children and the disabled, can now expect to collect regular benefit checks without being obliged to look for work.
She told FactCheck: “We have got quite strong deterrents in place already. You and I could not decide we just wanted to give up work and live on benefits for the rest of our lives.
“In our experience, the people we are advising are people who come looking for work or who have been working and – as could happen to anybody – they have fallen on hard times. I don’t think we ever get inquiries from people who have just pitched up wanting to claim benefits.
“I think that the internal rules are tough enough.”
She added: “UK nationals migrating to other member states also benefit from EU provisions if they need to claim benefit whilst they are in those other member states.
“In fact other EU countries may have more generous benefit systems than the UK does in some respects.”
On that last point it’s not at all clear that the UK has an outstandingly generous benefits system compared to other EU states.
Because the social security systems of different countries are so different, it’s difficult to compare like with like. The European Commission said it didn’t have up-to-date figures.
Some 2008 research by Forbes put Britain behind the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Luxembourg, Finland and Denmark based on comparing the average benefit payment measured by local purchasing power with average income.
In 2010 the American government produced some research that put the UK behind Ireland, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.
The verdict
So if benefit “tourism” is still out even if the European Commission gets its way, long-term sponging won’t an option thanks to the government’s own crackdown, and there are other more attractive destinations closer to home, it’s difficult to see why floods of work-shy immigrants will be queuing up to make Britain their home.
FactCheck asked the government for estimates of how big the problem of benefit tourism actually is, and whether it had got better or worse since the introduction of “right to reside” in 2004.
A DWP spokesman said the department had “no information available”.
We also asked where the headline figures of a potential annual cost to the taxpayer of up to £2.5bn came from, and we were told: “The £2.5bn is taken from our internal estimates – showing the worst case scenario. Essentially we have looked at a range of scenarios with the possible fiscal impact ranging from £650m to £2.5bn per annum.”
It later transpired that the figures were based on estimated changes in the economically inactive population, with analysts looking at possible increases of five, ten and 20 per cent to get that worst-case scenario figure.
As far as FactCheck understands – and we weren’t allowed to look at the methodology in detail – this appears to mean that it would cost the country £2.5bn if the ranks of the economically inactive (9.38 million according to the latest Office of National Statistics figures) swelled by 20 per cent.
That would mean a sudden influx of 1.87 million benefit migrants – more than three times the entire Polish-born population of the UK – would have to take place for the Government’s direst predictions to come true.
Given this dubious evidence base, Mr Duncan Smith’s comments are going to stay firmly down at the Fiction end of the FactCheck-o-meter for the time being.
By Patrick Worrall
There are 18 comments on this post
But why let facts get in the way of a popular story on the eve of party conference? I thought that the previous government had broken new heights of mendacity, but this one has already overtaken them.
I wonder whether their proposed “Bill of Rights” to replace the Human Rights legislation will include the right to have a weekly refuse collection? After all, wasn’t that sport of thing what we fought the last wat for?
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i’m a british national just returning from abroad after 12 years and have been refused any kind of benefit. i wAS born here , so were my parents and their parents, educated here and worked for 13 years here paying into the system, i have come back here with the intention of settling here and bringing my three kids here for their education but still have been refused. i am now classed as “a person from abroad” in my own country!
now thats what is wrong with this test when a british national and citizen have to take it.
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A couple of points:
* Interesting how you emphasise that it was a Conservative government in 1994, but neglect to emphasise that it was a Labour government in 2004 who tightened things up
* Your point seems to be that people aren’t going to come to the UK to live on benefits because they wouldn’t claim anything for 1 – 3 months. Are you seriously suggesting that someone who’s currently got no income in another country couldn’t somehow survive with no income for only 30 days in the UK before being able to claim all kinds of benefits for potentially the rest of their lives if they wanted?
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The problem is that there is no evidence of Benefit Tourism in the first place. The last wave of migration was all plumbers and construction workers looking for work, and when work runs out many of them go back but the government is still not counting properly in either direction. Whether loopholes exist or not the fact is that people migrate to look for work, that is the main driver.
There is anecdotal evidence that Bangladeshi’s migrate for benefits but that has nothing to do with the EU.
What IDS is doing is a disgrace even to his profession.
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you’re right, cause the when i walk into the job centre there’s not much english being spoken there its mainly polish. and they are there to sign on.
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Everyone knows Channel 4 is Pro EU… Eu puppets pushing the EU agenda! So this is what everyone would expect from you.
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Channel 4 may well be pro-EU but that doesn’t change the facts of this report. I find it hard to believe that Brussels is pulling the strings at Channel 4, unless I’m part of the conspiracy too.
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Cathy Newman says that “Duncan Smith’s comments are going to stay firmly down at the Fiction end of the FactCheck-o-meter for the time being.” Well, both her and her colleague Sarah Smith’s assessments are certainly at that same end of my factcheck-o-meter.
Newman echoes Smith’s partial account of the UK system in her C4 presentation. She says “it’s not at all clear that the UK has an outstandingly generous benefits system compared to other EU states” (who said it had?), while Smith claimed that the UK benefit system “is far from the most generous in Europe” (again, not what Duncan-Smith said). What Newman and Smith omit from their analyses is that our benefits system consists of more than JSA (which is all that was in Smith’s graphics for the UK); no account was taken of housing costs or allowances for children. This affects the relativities. Take an unemployed man with a wife and 2 children; he can get in total a sum equal to 75% of what he’d get in work earning around £20,000 a year.
Newman and Smith are not as familiar with the social security systems as they should be before reporting on this topic. They should also talk to analysts unconnected…
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The comparison of benefits made on the 30 Sept bulletin reveals the lack of understanding of the benefit system from journalists, the general elite etc, mainly I suspect due to their remoteness from the benefit system and not knowing many people on UK welfare benefits.
A rather crude comparison was made between UK unemployment benefit (jobseekers allowance) and well of northern European countires making the UK system look lousy. It did not explore whether the other systems that seem to pay more pay housing and council tax on top (which many people qualify for) or whether the apparent higher payment covers all. It did not address the extremely low level of benefits paid in Eastern Europe.
It is the whole benefit structure that makes the UK attractive – a single mother can get income support, housing and council tax benefit, child tax credits and child benefit – and the habitual residency test is invoked only for the not in work benefits only and never for jobseekers allowance. The limit of characters that can be entered means I cannot elaborate further in great detail. Needless to say, for channnel 4 news, it was a poor show and poorly researched.
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You state “In most cases, that means that you would have to be in this country for one to three months before you could expect to get any kind of handout.So much for benefit “tourism”, if what that means is staying in the country for a short while and sponging off the state at the same time. Anyone who came here with that intention would find themselves with nothing to live on for months.”
That is a disingenuous and silly interpretation of what benefit tourism is. It is not people travelling here on a fortnight’s holiday and trying to claim benefits, but coming to live in the UK for the purpose of claiming its higher benefits.
If all these other countries you quote have higher benefits could you tell us if they are concerned about such benefit migration or have of them any under-threat rules like that of the UK?
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I believe I am correct in stating that Commonwealth citizens born before Jan 1st 1983 if they have a parent born in the UK have the right of abode. Similarly Commonwealth citizens who have a grandparent born in the UK may be admitted for 5years . Then they will have the right to remain.I believe they have the right to claim benefits in the interim.
Citizens of Zimbabwe were still considered Commonwealth Citizens for nationality purposes after the country’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth because the UK did not amend Schedule3 to the British Nationality Act 1981.
So there may well be some loopholes . However some immigrants do not fall into either the Commonwealth or EU categories but there is an ‘indefinite leave to remain category’ that I have not investigated. I am not sure which categories these [eg Turkish] fall into. We are a small overcrowded island and immigration has to be considered very carefully, from an economic and social perspective.
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Our welfare policy is built on the erroneous view that today’s unemployed are happy surviving on welfare and often want to live off the spoils of others. It would be odd if our government’s stance towards unemployed ‘foreign’ labour was to suggest anything different – all irrelevant to possibilities for improvements of course – what are the current levels of unemployment in the European common labour market?
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9.9% and 7.7% in UK.
It’s only 3% in Switzerland which isn’t EU but it is in Schengen – the “no borders” treaty and they speak three official languages plus English.
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Agreed on the poor quality of the research. The 1-3 months that has to expire before benefits start over here isn’t onerous, especially if the EU immigrant lives with family member or friend already here. Secondly, the benefits system isn’t as hard to navigate and manipulate as suggested. There are people who have quite easily signed on for JSA for years that I happen to know, and they say it’s a “doddle.” I was signing on for a few years myself, and can confirm that it’s not much more than a nuisance to anyone who really isn’t looking for work. Compared to the presumably harsher systems in effect in Eastern Europe, the UK system will be no deterrent for those determined to manipulate the UK benefits system to their advantage and with no intention of working (or should I say legally working). Posters may recall that the present conditions put in place before benefits are paid out was a last-minute response made by Blair to his critics. Of course, it was Blair who also claimed that immigration from Poland would be a fraction of what it actually turned out as. Blair’s position reflects the over-optimistic sets of assumptions made in the flawed FactCheck analysis.
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[QUOTE]
Only a small number of economically inactive people, like single parents with very young children and the disabled, can now expect to collect regular benefit checks without being obliged to look for work.[/QUOTE]
People do not collect benefit checks, but benefit cheques. The government undertakes regular benefit checks to see if people are eligible.
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Cathy/Patrick,
Now look what you’ve done.
You have given severe indigestion to the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sun, Daily Star, Times and Daily Telegraph. There will be a few others, plus of course the dandruff ridden loonies of the neocon Brit Right.
Well done
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No you don’t have be here five years to claim. That’s the period before you get an automatic right to reside. You can claim after 3 months, if you have a chance of finding work.
And no it won’t take 1.7 million benefit tourists to cost 2.5 billion unless each claims just £1500 a year. 100,000 families claiming 25,000 would do it. We had 30,000 Dutch Somalians from Holland under existing rules. The Government figures are conservative.
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Patrick Worrall seeks views from someone who works for the CPAG . How about some balance, such as views from someone who used to work in the field?
How about reference to such tricks as selling newspapers one day a week so as to establish a trade, whereupon the seller is self-employed and entitled to benefits?
Is all this driven by Channel 4′s view of its target audience – ie you don’t give a fig for anyone who does not love the luvvies and multi-cultural, metropolitan socialism?
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