370,000 migrants on the dole. Really?

For those of you who've awoken to today's misleading article by the Telegraph entitled '370,000 migrants on the dole', and the equally bad piece by by Chris Grayling, we thought we'd get out a quick post to try to clear up some of the poor reporting around this issue.

1. The DWP report counts British citizens amongst the 370,000 figure. As such the real figure for numbers claiming benefits is likely to be far LOWER (p.3 of the report). Indeed if you read on in the report the suggestion is that the figure could be cut by over a half  (p.11) thus giving a more accurate actual figure of 199,800 i.e. out of the 5.5 million people claiming benefits that would work out at around 3.2% of total claimants.

2.  The percentage of what is classified as 'non nationals' for benefit purposes shows that  migrants actually proportionally claim far  LESS in the way of benefits than UK nationals. The rate for so called UK nationals is 16.6% and for foreign nationals it's 6.6% (see page 4 of the report).

3. The report and statistics are not confined to  'dole' benefits' and instead also cover Disability Living Allowance, Carers Allowance, Bereaved (widow's benefit), Pension Credit, and others, so that yet further lowers the figure for so called 'dole claims'.

4. The report shows that there's a staggering LOW Fraud for benefit claims by 'foreign nationals' (p.11) in the region of around 2%.

5. Non- EEA migrants are not generally entitled to ANY non-contribution based benefits, and Brits in the EU have reciprocal entitlements to benefit claims in those countries. Moreover, why shouldn't migrants who've worked and contributed to the UK through taxation on their income be it as salaried or self employed people, claim benefits when they fall upon hard time just like anyone else?

6. Statistics from various research reports tend to show that migrants are NET CONTRIBUTORS to the PUBLIC PURSE

7. More generally migrants also bring in a load of other benefits to the UK including the relocation of large companies. Indeed the Migration Advisory Committee previously found extensive evidence from Japanese companies such as Hitachi, Honda and Mitsubishi, that if these companies were prevented from recruiting workers from Japan, they would have to scale back their UK operations significantly. On average, for every one Japanese national, these companies employ 73 UK residents.