Over one million migrants claiming benefits

There are 1.15 million foreign born individuals claiming some form of in-work benefit, imposing huge costs on British taxpayers.

There are 1.15m foreign born individuals living in Britain who are claiming some form of working age benefit, including Universal Credit and housing support.

This figure is drawn from the 2019 edition of Nationality at point of National Insurance number registration of DWP working age benefit recipients, and reflects the trend of the preceding years.

The breakdown of benefit type being claimed by migrants is as follows:

A combination including out-of-work Universal Credit: 224,756

A combination including in-work Universal Credit: 192,125

A combination including Housing Benefit: 467,036

Other (including legacy benefits such as JSA): 158,124

The raw figures, by country of birth, are as follows:

When cross-referenced with ONS figures from 2021, we are able to calculate the relative claim rate of each country of origin in the UK. The results show that there are 40 country of origin groups in the UK who have a higher benefit claim rate than the British population (107 per 1,000). The top 10 are as follows:

Age adjusted to just include the working age of each country’s population shows the following:

There are 27 countries of origin which have a higher working age benefit claim rate than the British.

So where are we in 2025?

These figures are from 2019 and in the interim we have seen 1.3m people be given Indefinite Leave to Remain or settled status under the EUSS between 2019 and 2024. This legal status is an anachronism, created when the UK was running net negative migration and allows migrants to effectively enter the ante-room to British citizenship. Using Home Office data on the nationality breakdown of those receiving ILR and EUSS, and cross-referencing it with the data above, we can forecast that the welfare burden has already, or is likely to in the foreseeable future, been increased by an additional 196,866 overseas individuals.

This includes a further 27,000 from Romania, 11,000 from Italy, 10,000 from Portugal and Poland, 9,000 from Bulgaria, and 4,000 from Slovakia. The EUSS, and the politicians who designed it, have a lot to answer for which will be the subject of a later analysis.

What does this cost?

Well the DWP are very poor at collecting information on the amount that is actually paid in working age benefits to migrants. But fortunately the Centre for Policy Studies were able, via FOI, to ascertain that in 2023 households with at least foreign national (note, not a foreign born individual who has subsequently been awarded British citizenship) received £7.6bn in Universal Credit.

But this is only half the picture

These individuals are also consuming public services, requiring increased expenditure from the Treasury to cater for their presence in Britain. In September the OBR produced, for the first time, an analysis which suggests that low-wage migrants are a fiscal cost (even before we include welfare payments) on the Treasury at every stage of life.

The CMC submitted an FOI to the OBR and can show the underlying workings (which are still far too conservative in estimating the costs, but nonetheless a starting point):

These figures represent the fiscal profile of a migrant who has just been awarded ILR. The tax take assumed (not just income tax, but all indirect taxes) suggests an assumption that a low-wage migrant recently settled in the UK will be earning roughly £25,000 a year,

The base cost of a low-wage migrant is £2,000.

The clear problem with this estimate, of course, is that the costs of providing education to the children of low-wage migrants are not included in this forecast. The CMC has previously calculated that the costs of dependants, including children, arriving under the ‘Boriswave’ will amount to £35bn by the end of the decade.

However, if we take these figures at their word (although, again, they are more than likely a significant understatement) then those migrants on an in-work benefit (UC or housing support) will on average be costing the taxpayer a further £2,000 in public spending (were we to do the OBR’s job for it, and include the cost of educating children etc this figure will likely be closer to £3,000).

£2,000 multiplied by the 659,161 on in-work benefits (2019 figures) produces a bill of £1.31bn.

Then we have the 382,880 on out-of-work UC or JSA. The total fiscal position of these individuals (before welfare) is not accounted for in OBR figures. But if we take the official body’s assumption of spending equating to £7.7k and then generously assume that £1.7k is being paid by these individuals through indirect taxes, we have a proposed net cost of £6,000 for a migrant claiming out-of-work benefits. This would give us a further cost to the Treasury of £2.29bn. In total, the cost of non-welfare expenditure for migrants on benefits would total £3.6bn.

NOTE: this figure does not take into consideration the cost of expenditure for the projected 196,866 further migrants who, since 2019, are likely to have begun a benefit claim or will do so in the foreseeable future.

It should also be noted that these figure DO NOT includes those benefits administered by HMRC, such as Tax Credits or Child Benefit. These figures are therefore understating the problem.