One of the government’s aims is to prevent migrants coming to the UK to claim benefits, but the employment minister, Chris Grayling, said that the vast majority of immigrants claiming benefits are entitled to do so.
The government released figures revealing that 371,000 foreign-born claimants were claiming out-of-work benefits. However, it was found that only 2% of those were suspected fraudulent claims and the other 98% were entitled to claim.
Grayling denied that the government was guilty of scaremongering by releasing the figures. He said there was “a lot of talk” aboutBritain’s benefit system being a “magnet” for people from around the world. “Maybe it isn’t a big problem right now,” he said, but added: “We want to ensure we don’t have inBritaina system that encourages benefit tourism.”
It would be interesting to see how many British nationals are claiming out-of-work benefits and just how many of those are suspected to be fraudulent claims. After all, the term ‘cultural dependancy’ did come from somewhere.
