More Than One Million Foreigners Claiming Benefits

Benefits are being claimed by over one million foreign nationals, according to an analysis of Government figures.

Households with at least one foreign national claimant received more than £7.5 billion in universal credit in 2023, figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show.

Foreign nationals become eligible for universal credit and other benefits on the same terms as British citizens once they are granted indefinite leave to remain and have settled or refugee status. After paying national insurance for 10 years, they are also entitled to the state pension.

The analysis by the Centre for Migration Control (CMC) suggests 40 nationalities – after getting indefinite leave to remain, settled status or refugee protection – are claiming benefits at a greater rate per head of population than British citizens. Three nationalities – Congolese, Iraqis and Afghans – are claiming benefits at four times the rate of British people.

The disclosure of the foreign welfare bill comes ahead of an expected announcement by Sir Keir Starmer unveiling up to £6 billion of benefit cuts. He has described the system as “unsustainable, indefensible and unfair” but is facing the biggest rebellion of his premiership over the planned reforms.

The cost of foreign benefit claims excludes a further £5.4 billion for accommodating and supporting a backlog of more than 100,000 asylum seekers. That cost rose five-fold in five years under the last Conservative government.

The bill is likely to increase as 800,000 foreign nationals are expected to receive indefinite leave to remain in the UK over the next decade following record levels of net migration of up to 906,000 a year, according to a separate analysis by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS).

The Tories have proposed that jobless and low-paid migrants should be barred from remaining indefinitely in the UK. They have also argued that the length of time before anyone who has come to the UK can claim such leave to remain should be increased from five to 10 years.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said the benefits bill for foreign nationals was “unacceptable” and “astonishing”. “It is immoral that British taxpayers are subsidising nationals of other countries on an industrial scale. No wonder our taxes are so high,” he said.

“Research shows low-wage migrants actually cost other taxpayers money. This is why the era of mass migration has to end. I have tabled amendments to the Borders Bill to create a legally binding annual cap on immigration numbers and an increase in the visa salary threshold to £38,000 across the board.”

The CMC analysis is based on DWP data from 2019, which shows that there were 990,000 foreigners – 610,000 non-EU nationals and 380,000 EU nationals – who were claiming working-age benefits, an increase of 9 per cent on the year before. This compared with 6.1 million Britons, which had only increased by 4 per cent since 2018.

The DWP has not updated the figures since the pandemic but CMC has estimated a further 168,000 claimants would have been added if foreign nationals’ claims continued at the same rate.

This would give a cumulative total of 1,158,000 but will be lower as some will have left, died or stopped claiming. The CMC calculated rates of claims per nationality in 2019 relative to their overall population in the 2021 census.

Of the 200 nationalities, Poland accounted for the largest number of claimants at 89,040, followed by Pakistan (85,881), Bangladesh (54,589), Romania (45,727), India (33,561), Portugal (32,063), Nigeria (23,627) and Ireland (17,933).

The Congo had the highest rate at 445 claims per 1,000 of their population in the UK, based on 2021 census figures from the Office for National Statistics.

It was followed by Iraq at 434 per 1,000, Afghanistan (414), Algeria (361), Eritrea (355), Syria (352), Somalia (336), Iran (334), Morocco (286) and Slovakia (283). The average for the UK was 100 per 1,000 of the population.

If the average Universal Credit claim of £393.45 a month for a person over 25 was applied to the one million foreign claimants, the bill would total £4.7 billion a year.

In a response to a freedom of information request by the CPS, however, the DWP revealed that in 2023, households with at least one claimant from outside the UK or Ireland who had passed a habitual residence test received £7.6 billion in universal credit.

The DWP said that because universal credit was a household benefit, one claimant could be a UK national and the other not, or vice versa. “We are unable to apportion the total amount to each individual, therefore we have stated “at least one claimant,” said the DWP.

Karl Williams, research director at CPS, said: “We need to move towards a much more selective immigration system that prioritises migrants likely to be substantial net contributors.”

This spring Sir Keir will unveil a white paper to reduce migration by banning bosses who break employment law. Bosses who fail to pay their staff the minimum wage will be banned from hiring workers from abroad for up to two years and companies will be required to train Britons for jobs before they can recruit from overseas.

Rob Bates, CMC research director, said: “It is an unsustainable state of affairs and one that reveals the real folly behind our current indefinite leave to remain laws, meaning someone who has been here for just five years has access to the welfare state that British nationals have paid into for generations.”

A DWP spokesman said: “We have a duty to pay benefits to all those entitled to receive them, however the figures highlighted refer to 2019, and can’t be used to provide an indication of the current nationality of claimants.

“Universal Credit is designed to incentivise moving people into employment and progression at work and has a thorough application process. Illegal migrants with no immigration status cannot receive Universal Credit and refugees and non-UK or Irish citizens can only receive payments once they have had their status granted by the Home Office and satisfy the Habitual Residence Test.”