The British government published demographic statistics on benefit claimants for the first time on Tuesday, revealing levels of tax money payments to foreigners so high Nigel Farage said Conservative politicians should be “in hiding” out of shame.
The number of foreigners claiming Universal Credit in Britain in the month of June was 1.26 million people, out of a total 7.9 million claimants, new statistics from the UK Government reveal.
Universal Credit is a welfare payment that was created by the previous Conservative government to replace a plethora of other smaller benefits into one easier to administer handout. Claimants can be unemployed, unable to work, or in very low paid work and receiving a top-up to bring them up to a living wage. Migrants can become eligible for the payment if they have indefinite leave to remain or refugee status and indeed over two per cent of all claimants are refugees of varying classifications.
The statistics are the first time demographic data has been published for Universal Credit and as acknowledged by the BBC, the publication comes following a campaign by now-independent right-wing Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe. Last month, Lowe wrote: “It is absolutely mental that we are paying illegal migrants benefits. And we wonder why they keep coming… Stop benefits for foreign nationals, other than those who have contributed for 10+ years, and get these millions of healthy Brits back to work.”
Other aspects of the data published on Tuesday revealed that in all, 76.4 per cent of claimants are recorded as having white ethnicity, that the average payment was £1,010 a month, and the overwhelming majority of migrant claimants are unemployed.
Applying the average payment to migrant claimants suggest the monthly cost of migrant Universal Credit to migrants could be one-and-a-quarter billion pounds ($1.6 billion), or £15.2 billion a year. Earlier analyses before Tuesday’s data was published put the cost at £12 billion a year.
Conservative opposition politicians attacked the Labour government for the figures, but Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was quick to point out this situation was mostly created by the 14 years of Conservative Party government which concluded last year. In a recorded statement on the figures, he said: “for the first time the Department of Work and Pensions have given us some figures that many have wanted for years.
“The result? There are 1.3 million migrants on Universal Credit, and over half of them don’t do any work at all. This goes completely against the lie we’ve been told for 25 years that immigration’s fine because everyone’s working and everyone’s contributing. We can see from this that it’s not… some of this has happened since Labour came to power but nearly all of it happened during 14 years of Conservative government.
“And if they dare say a word about these numbers today don’t take them seriously and frankly they should be in hiding for what they’ve done to this country”.
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