More Than £10 Billion of Universal Credit Went to Non-UK Citizens Last Year
One in every six pounds of Universal Credit now goes to foreigners, with payouts topping £10 billion. The Telegraphhas the story.
Internal government data, published for the first time, show more than £10 billion was paid in Universal Credit to non-UK or Irish citizens last year.
The data, released under freedom of information laws, reveal that £10.1 billion of the £61.2 billion spent on Universal Credit in 2024 went to foreigners.
It means that 16.5% of the entire budget went to migrants – or £1 in every £6.
The amount spent on overseas nationals has increased from £6.3 billion in 2022 and £7.9 billion in 2023, rising as a proportion from 15.5 to 16.5%. …
The statistics will add to concerns about the escalating burden on the taxpayer of supporting large numbers of migrants in low-paying jobs.
Both the Tories and Reform have said they would bar foreign nationals from claiming benefits to bring down the spiralling welfare bill.
The new figures showed that households containing at least one Pakistani national claimed £700 million of Universal Credit last year, up from £430 million two years ago.
Meanwhile, the total amount received by households with at least one Afghan citizen has doubled in the space of two years from £150 million to £300 million. …
Benefits can only be claimed by foreign nationals who either have indefinite leave to remain, following five years of residency, or refugee status. …
The £10.1 billion figure also does not include foreign-born individuals who came to the UK as migrants but who have since gone on to claim UK citizenship.
The revelation comes after researchers warned that migrants who have arrived since January 2021 could alone cost taxpayers £234 billion.
The Centre for Policy Studies said that 800,000 foreign nationals could claim indefinite leave to remain in the UK by the end of the decade.
That would make them entitled to access benefits, including unemployment and sickness handouts, as well as free treatment on the NHS. …
In July, official statistics released by the Department for Work and Pensions revealed that more than 1.2 million foreign nationals were claiming Universal Credit. It was the first time figures had been broken down by immigration status.
This was equivalent to one in five (19%) of all claims and a 9% year-on-year increase.
What percentage of the population of the UK is not British/Northern Irish?
Turns out it is 16%, i.e. one sixth. Meaning, foreigners in the UK are in receipt of UC to exactly the same proportion as the natives.
Clickbait. You’re better than this, DS.
I know there is a large foreign and undocumented population – but they won’t be in receipt of UC. And I don’t have a lot of faith in the British Civil Service, but I am fairly certain that more than one UC payout per NI Number isn’t a thing.
The immigration problem has been created by making benefits available to new arrivals. Half the social housing in London is taken by such new arrivals. It is pointless, though, to rail at the government. Open door immigration is not government policy. It is blob policy. The government cannot stop it. It has not the power to stop it. Unconditional open-door visas to rural Pakistanis are issued by Pakistani heritage persons in the Home office, working from home. If you interfere with their racket, they claim bullying and accuse you of racism and Islamaphobia – a fate worse than death in our public sector.
I don’t doubt what you write, and it does add another dimension to this.
Historically, I would hazard a guess that foreigners in the UK would have claimed less benefits than the natives. Perhaps the specific point here is that this is now changing.
“Open door immigration is not government policy. It is blob policy”. Oh dear, that shakes my belief that we are a democratic society. Are we or not? Your answer will help me decide whether to vote at the next election, local or general.
The problem with your argument, MAk, is it doesn’t ask what is the benefit to the country of importing people to do commercial jobs that do not generate income for the country. A thin argument can be made that it is better to have someone working on UC than needing unemployment benefits, but not to import workers to do those jobs. Your calculation showing that immigrant UC claims match the percentage of native claims is as false as those who say that immigrants commit crime at the same level as the indigenous population. There is little we can do about domestic crime but if you come to a country, you should not commit any crime so their statistics should be zero and similarly, it is only worth importing workers making a positive contribution so their rate of UC claims should be lower – not zero because some allowance has to be given for underpaid non-commercial jobs.
Not sure you have your maths right here, MAk – the rate of Universal benefit is around 11.5% of the population (8m of 70m). Therefore for foreign nationals to be 16% of that 8m is a considerably higher proportion.
But it’s worse than that, as I’m fairly sure your “16% of the population” figure is actually for all foreign-born people, not just foreign nationals, so includes all those with citizenship, which according to the 2012 census is 43%. That halves the pool again, and so almost doubles the rate of state-dependence in foreign nationals.
As others has suggested, if we had an immigration policy based on welcoming the useful, the rate should be much lower than the general population, not dramatically higher.
Jon, you wrote that “11.5% of the population (8m of 70m) [receive Universal Credit]”.
So, on average, a foreign individual receives a higher UC payment than the average native. But in total, one sixth of the money goes to one sixth of the population (the foreigners).
This also indicates that the value of individual UC payments to foreigners varies a LOT more than the payments to the natives.
However, to answer your point, I would say that just because an individual doesn’t have a UK Mafia Issued Bit Of Paper that should not mean that we should completely ignore them if they do, in fact, contribute to the UK economy, and at some point need some help.
If they have never contributed, then no, the UK taxpayer should not pay them any benefits. They should be able to prove they are self-sufficient before we let them stay at all.
Genuine seekers of asylum (i.e. probably not the ones coming off dinghies, nor other economic migrants) should be handled very carefully, of course.
I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it, if a job has been created to employ a foreign national and requires my taxes to subsidise it, it’s not a job, with few exceptions. So every foreigner working for Starbucks, Uber, Amazon, etc etc, should be removed unless those employers start paying wages that don’t require subsidy. If the business model for a company only works because the employee wages are subsidised with my tax, then it isn’t a business, it’s an unnecessary Government department and should be closed.
Other parties and their supporters in the MSM ask Reform how we could fund our policies. Cancelling these benefits and other costs of non-citizens would be an easy way to cut benefit costs. As a result we would likely also cut the numbers here as most only came for the cash.
And cut all foreign aid, because British Taxpayers are paying £millions to Third World countries in foreign aid, and more £millions to the citizens of those same countries who swarm into the UK, and who then use UK welfare benefits to build mansions in their Third World countries, where they retire on full UK pensions.
No Indigenous Briton benefits from Third World Immigration— it is totally destructive to the West.
Heretic
6 months ago
Thanks to the Telegraph and DS for this appalling information. Here is another good, short article about it, for those without access to the paywalled Telegraph:
“This is not just unsustainable, it is a betrayal. THE WELFARE STATE WAS BUILT BY BRITONS, FOR BRITONS. It is not the world’s safety net. If a government cannot draw that line, cannot say clearly that benefits are for citizens, not for anyone who happens to arrive, then it is failing in its most basic duty: TO PROTECT ITS OWN PEOPLE FIRST.”
“The answer is not complicated. End welfare access for non-citizens. Prioritise British workers in the labour market. Close the loopholes that let recent arrivals tap into public funds. And STOP TREATING THE NATIONAL BUDGET like a GLOBAL CHARITY POT.”
“This is not just unsustainable, it is a betrayal. THE WELFARE STATE WAS BUILT BY BRITONS, FOR BRITONS. It is not the world’s safety net. If a government cannot draw that line, cannot say clearly that benefits are for citizens, not for anyone who happens to arrive, then it is failing in its most basic duty: TO PROTECT ITS OWN PEOPLE FIRST.” This is a false dichotomy because the groups of people involved here are not just citizens and anyone who happens to arrive. The only people who get benefits because they happened to arrive are illegal immigrants. Foreigners who moved legally to Britain aren’t entitled to benefits “because they happened to arrive” but because they qualified for equal treatment by meeting the criteria government had set for that. These criteria themselves are obviously open for discussion and perhaps not that sensible but that’s the fault of the government(s) which decided on them and not of the people who fulfilled their legal obligations in this respect. It’s also wrong that THE WELFARE STATE WAS BUILT BY BRITONS, FOR BRITONS. Foreign nationals who weren’t illegal immigrants contributed a sizable amount to this welfare state. Not all of them, obviously, and maybe… Read more »
No, the article is NOT WRONG in any way. You are just being defensive as a non-citizen, because you have worked hard at a good job and paid taxes for many years, but there is no need to be defensive, because our fellow Ethnic Europeans are not the problem. Just for you, here is an interesting article: Germans in the United Kingdom – Wikipedia
For the whole of the history of the British Isles, the population was virtually 100% Ethnic European = White. Unfortunately, this began to decline after the Illegal Human Trafficking Operations like Windrush and Commonwealth people swarming in, and the Ethnic European = White population has been steadily dropping since then. For example, from White people in the United Kingdom – Wikipedia
What you believe about me is completely irrelevant here. The article talks about foreigners who get welfare payments because they happened to arrive. But only illegal immigrants/ asylum seekers/ refugees are foreigners entitled to benefits because they happened to arrive and the majority of foreigners in Britain doesn’t belong to this group. Upon arrival, legal immigrants are entitled to exactly nothing. They can be granted indefinite leave to remain after they’ve been legally resident for the prescribed time and supporting themselves in some way which will usually mean “by working” which implies paying taxes and NI. Should they be granted indefinite leave to remain, they become entitled to state benefits. But that’s something the author of the article simply ignores: He’s clearly referring to the asylum seeker situation but calls them foreigners, despite the larger group of foreigners isn’t in this situation and he damn well knows that himself. He just doesn’t want his audience to know about it. Whether BRITONS BUILT THE WELFARE STATE FOR BRITONS but they were using other people’s money for that or Britons and other people built the welfare state is a more correct statement is semantical pettifogging. The Universal Credit system was created by… Read more »
Assuming the UK benefits bill was only 83% of what it actually is, would that make it much more affordable? And why are people who have been tax-paying, legal residents for at least five years, but usually, for a much longer time, grouped together with illegal immigrants “granted refugee status” (after they immigrated illegally)?
Members of the latter group intentionally broke UK law in order to get access to the British welfare state. Members of the former group didn’t.
What appalls me is that £60bn is spent annually on universal credit – i.e. money the state takes from people who work and just gives away to people don’t for no other than, you know, being “fair”.
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Remember, that Reeves prioritised making Pensioners freeze in Winter over hitting her imported voting base.
You don’t despise the far left enough.
What percentage of the population of the UK is not British/Northern Irish?
Turns out it is 16%, i.e. one sixth. Meaning, foreigners in the UK are in receipt of UC to exactly the same proportion as the natives.
Clickbait. You’re better than this, DS.
I know there is a large foreign and undocumented population – but they won’t be in receipt of UC. And I don’t have a lot of faith in the British Civil Service, but I am fairly certain that more than one UC payout per NI Number isn’t a thing.
Let’s not allow them to divide us, hm?
The immigration problem has been created by making benefits available to new arrivals. Half the social housing in London is taken by such new arrivals. It is pointless, though, to rail at the government. Open door immigration is not government policy. It is blob policy. The government cannot stop it. It has not the power to stop it. Unconditional open-door visas to rural Pakistanis are issued by Pakistani heritage persons in the Home office, working from home. If you interfere with their racket, they claim bullying and accuse you of racism and Islamaphobia – a fate worse than death in our public sector.
I don’t doubt what you write, and it does add another dimension to this.
Historically, I would hazard a guess that foreigners in the UK would have claimed less benefits than the natives. Perhaps the specific point here is that this is now changing.
“Open door immigration is not government policy. It is blob policy”. Oh dear, that shakes my belief that we are a democratic society. Are we or not? Your answer will help me decide whether to vote at the next election, local or general.
The problem with your argument, MAk, is it doesn’t ask what is the benefit to the country of importing people to do commercial jobs that do not generate income for the country. A thin argument can be made that it is better to have someone working on UC than needing unemployment benefits, but not to import workers to do those jobs. Your calculation showing that immigrant UC claims match the percentage of native claims is as false as those who say that immigrants commit crime at the same level as the indigenous population. There is little we can do about domestic crime but if you come to a country, you should not commit any crime so their statistics should be zero and similarly, it is only worth importing workers making a positive contribution so their rate of UC claims should be lower – not zero because some allowance has to be given for underpaid non-commercial jobs.
“…importing people to do commercial jobs that do not generate income for the country…”
Agreed, but that’s a different subject.
Our fellow citizens in are British. There is no need to mention them separately.
Britain does not include Northern Ireland. That’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Not sure you have your maths right here, MAk – the rate of Universal benefit is around 11.5% of the population (8m of 70m). Therefore for foreign nationals to be 16% of that 8m is a considerably higher proportion.
But it’s worse than that, as I’m fairly sure your “16% of the population” figure is actually for all foreign-born people, not just foreign nationals, so includes all those with citizenship, which according to the 2012 census is 43%. That halves the pool again, and so almost doubles the rate of state-dependence in foreign nationals.
As others has suggested, if we had an immigration policy based on welcoming the useful, the rate should be much lower than the general population, not dramatically higher.
One sixth of the population (the foreigners) are taking one sixth of the money.
Five sixths of the population (the natives) are taking five sixths of the money.
Ergo, the foreigners are taking the same amount of UC money as natives, relative to their numbers.
You have confused the ratios between
1. Counts of people,
2. Counts of UC claimants and
3. Sums of UC paid.
Jon, you wrote that “11.5% of the population (8m of 70m) [receive Universal Credit]”.
So, on average, a foreign individual receives a higher UC payment than the average native. But in total, one sixth of the money goes to one sixth of the population (the foreigners).
This also indicates that the value of individual UC payments to foreigners varies a LOT more than the payments to the natives.
Why should we pay benefits to foreigners?
My point is about mathematics.
However, to answer your point, I would say that just because an individual doesn’t have a UK Mafia Issued Bit Of Paper that should not mean that we should completely ignore them if they do, in fact, contribute to the UK economy, and at some point need some help.
If they have never contributed, then no, the UK taxpayer should not pay them any benefits. They should be able to prove they are self-sufficient before we let them stay at all.
Genuine seekers of asylum (i.e. probably not the ones coming off dinghies, nor other economic migrants) should be handled very carefully, of course.
I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it, if a job has been created to employ a foreign national and requires my taxes to subsidise it, it’s not a job, with few exceptions. So every foreigner working for Starbucks, Uber, Amazon, etc etc, should be removed unless those employers start paying wages that don’t require subsidy. If the business model for a company only works because the employee wages are subsidised with my tax, then it isn’t a business, it’s an unnecessary Government department and should be closed.
Other parties and their supporters in the MSM ask Reform how we could fund our policies. Cancelling these benefits and other costs of non-citizens would be an easy way to cut benefit costs. As a result we would likely also cut the numbers here as most only came for the cash.
And cut all foreign aid, because British Taxpayers are paying £millions to Third World countries in foreign aid, and more £millions to the citizens of those same countries who swarm into the UK, and who then use UK welfare benefits to build mansions in their Third World countries, where they retire on full UK pensions.
No Indigenous Briton benefits from Third World Immigration— it is totally destructive to the West.
Thanks to the Telegraph and DS for this appalling information. Here is another good, short article about it, for those without access to the paywalled Telegraph:
Britain’s Welfare State is Now a Global Free-For-All, By Richard Miller (Londonistan)
“This is not just unsustainable, it is a betrayal. THE WELFARE STATE WAS BUILT BY BRITONS, FOR BRITONS. It is not the world’s safety net. If a government cannot draw that line, cannot say clearly that benefits are for citizens, not for anyone who happens to arrive, then it is failing in its most basic duty: TO PROTECT ITS OWN PEOPLE FIRST.”
“The answer is not complicated. End welfare access for non-citizens. Prioritise British workers in the labour market. Close the loopholes that let recent arrivals tap into public funds. And STOP TREATING THE NATIONAL BUDGET like a GLOBAL CHARITY POT.”
“This is not just unsustainable, it is a betrayal. THE WELFARE STATE WAS BUILT BY BRITONS, FOR BRITONS. It is not the world’s safety net. If a government cannot draw that line, cannot say clearly that benefits are for citizens, not for anyone who happens to arrive, then it is failing in its most basic duty: TO PROTECT ITS OWN PEOPLE FIRST.” This is a false dichotomy because the groups of people involved here are not just citizens and anyone who happens to arrive. The only people who get benefits because they happened to arrive are illegal immigrants. Foreigners who moved legally to Britain aren’t entitled to benefits “because they happened to arrive” but because they qualified for equal treatment by meeting the criteria government had set for that. These criteria themselves are obviously open for discussion and perhaps not that sensible but that’s the fault of the government(s) which decided on them and not of the people who fulfilled their legal obligations in this respect. It’s also wrong that THE WELFARE STATE WAS BUILT BY BRITONS, FOR BRITONS. Foreign nationals who weren’t illegal immigrants contributed a sizable amount to this welfare state. Not all of them, obviously, and maybe… Read more »
No, the article is NOT WRONG in any way. You are just being defensive as a non-citizen, because you have worked hard at a good job and paid taxes for many years, but there is no need to be defensive, because our fellow Ethnic Europeans are not the problem. Just for you, here is an interesting article: Germans in the United Kingdom – Wikipedia
For the whole of the history of the British Isles, the population was virtually 100% Ethnic European = White. Unfortunately, this began to decline after the Illegal Human Trafficking Operations like Windrush and Commonwealth people swarming in, and the Ethnic European = White population has been steadily dropping since then. For example, from White people in the United Kingdom – Wikipedia
1971 – 97.5%
1981 – 96%
1991 – 94.5%
2001 – 92.12%
2011 – 87.2%
2021 – 83%
As the article by Richard Miller correctly stated,
“THE WELFARE STATE WAS BUILT BY BRITONS, FOR BRITONS.”
What you believe about me is completely irrelevant here. The article talks about foreigners who get welfare payments because they happened to arrive. But only illegal immigrants/ asylum seekers/ refugees are foreigners entitled to benefits because they happened to arrive and the majority of foreigners in Britain doesn’t belong to this group. Upon arrival, legal immigrants are entitled to exactly nothing. They can be granted indefinite leave to remain after they’ve been legally resident for the prescribed time and supporting themselves in some way which will usually mean “by working” which implies paying taxes and NI. Should they be granted indefinite leave to remain, they become entitled to state benefits. But that’s something the author of the article simply ignores: He’s clearly referring to the asylum seeker situation but calls them foreigners, despite the larger group of foreigners isn’t in this situation and he damn well knows that himself. He just doesn’t want his audience to know about it. Whether BRITONS BUILT THE WELFARE STATE FOR BRITONS but they were using other people’s money for that or Britons and other people built the welfare state is a more correct statement is semantical pettifogging. The Universal Credit system was created by… Read more »
What % of it is paid to people who immigrated since WW2, or descendants of those, regardless of citizenship?
the best reason yet to vote Reform.
Assuming the UK benefits bill was only 83% of what it actually is, would that make it much more affordable? And why are people who have been tax-paying, legal residents for at least five years, but usually, for a much longer time, grouped together with illegal immigrants “granted refugee status” (after they immigrated illegally)?
Members of the latter group intentionally broke UK law in order to get access to the British welfare state. Members of the former group didn’t.
What appalls me is that £60bn is spent annually on universal credit – i.e. money the state takes from people who work and just gives away to people don’t for no other than, you know, being “fair”.
We’ve completely lost our minds.
Effectively subsidising big business and keeping their wage bill down… like a charitable contribution
Capitalising the profits for Big Business; transferring British taxpayers’ money to the 3rd world via remittances; and socialising the costs.
In every way, the British people are being screwed by mass immigration.