Contrary to what David Cameron would have you believe, benefit tourism just isn't a significant problem.
In a sop to UKIP, David Cameron has pledged to bar migrants from claiming out-of-work benefits for three months after their arrival to the UK.
The measure is supposed to put off ‘would-be benefit tourists’ from coming to Britain.
What David Cameron probably won’t tell you, however, is that migrants from Eastern Europe are less likely to claim benefits than indiginous Britons.
Most migrants from the EU do not come to Britain to sign on, but to work. Migrants who came to the UK after the year 2000 have made a ‘substantial’ contribution to public finances, according to a recent study by University College London.
Those from the European Economic Area (EEA – the EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) made a particularly strong contribution in the decade up to 2011, contributing 34 per cent more in taxes than they received in benefits, the study found.
Other data backs this up.
In 2008-09, at the height of Labour’s policy of so-called ‘uncontrolled immigration’, A8 immigrants paid 37 per cent more in direct or indirect taxes than they received in public goods and services.
A8 immigrants contributed 0.96 per cent of total tax receipts and accounted for only 0.6 per cent of total expenditures (see table).
And before someone makes a boring argument about Britain’s benefit system being ‘the most generous in Europe’, that isn’t true either. A study by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Centre for Population Change (CPC) carried out last year found that the UK had below average levels of welfare spending among developed nations. (See graph).
There is no reason to view Britain as any more attractive to benefit tourists than other EU countries, and no reason to view the latest ‘crackdown’ on ‘welfare tourism’ as anything other than an attempt to shore up the right-wing vote.
Benefit tourism just isn’t a significant problem.
45 Responses to “We repeat, migrants are *less* likely to claim benefits than indigenous Britons”
Boston_scoundrel
What’s Hamza got to do with it? Nothing.
The fact is that EEA migrants make a massive net fiscal contribution. That’s a fact. No amount of huffing and puffing about one man makes any difference.
And it’s a fact that migrants make up about 13% of the total workforce! but only7% of out of work benefit claimants. EEA migrants make up about 10% of the workforce but about 5% of out of work benefit claimants. In other words, migrants are less likely to be claiming benefits than UK natives and EEA migrants much less likely.
They are facts. They might be inconvenient for you, but they are facts.
The source of these facts is the Office of National Statistics. Which, no doubt, you will claim to be biased in some way…
Boston_scoundrel
It’s obviously nonsense to suggest that all the new jobs in the economy have gone to migrants. I don’t know about you, but where I work almost all new job starters are UK natives. That’s true of most jobs. Something like 20000 people start a new job each week and the vast majority were born here. About 85% of new jobs go to UK natives. That’s a fact.
(Source – Jonathan Portes writing in the Spectator in 2012)
LB
Abu Hamzah has everything to do with it.
I asked a question and you won’t answer it.
Abu Hamzah was a migrant.
Did he or did he not make a net contribution to the UK?
Simple question. You’re claiming migrants make a net contribution. Hamzah is a migrant.
Just finding out whether or not your claim is true.
Did Hamzah make a net contribution?
LB
In other words, migrants are less likely to be claiming benefits than UK natives and EEA migrants much less likely.
============
That may well be the case. My figures based off research you’ve quoted put the number higher.
However, you’re not answering the question I’ve asked you’ve dodged it.
For those migrants on welfare, do they make a net contribution?
The answer is no they don’t. They consume money from other people on welfare and from the tax payer.
LB
I never claimed they did.
I said that employment has gone up. Migration has gone up. Unemployment hasn’t changed much.
That means that most of the new jobs have gone to migrants. If that was not the case, then unemployment would have gone down dramatically.
You can’t explain that away.