David Craig, on November 25th, 2014Apparently our lying PM, Dave ‘Cast-Iron-Promise’ Cameron is going to make an ‘important speech’ about immigration in the next few days. Well, that’ll be something to look forward to.
What will be in Dave’s great speech? He’ll definitely promise to clamp down on benefits paid to immigrants. What? Just like he clamped down on the possibly �20m or more a year in benefits (nobody appears to know the real figure) paid to (often non-existent) children who don’t even live in Britain? Germany only pays child benefits to children who actually live in Germany. So, Cameron could have stopped this �20m or more scam years ago, but did nothing.
Or will he promise to ‘further reduce immigration’ which has actually been rising recently, particularly from Asia (Pakistan). This chart only shows non-EU immigrants as it just tracks the number of visas granted (click to see more clearly)
If you were to add in immigrants from the EU, you’d probably be near to 800,000 arriving here every year. This is rather higher than the supposed ‘net migration’ figure of 243,000 (up from 175,000 last year) that our rulers like to use.
And will Cameron claim we still have room in Britain for those who want to ‘work hard’ and contribute to our country? Probably. But where will we put the 800,000 people arriving each year?
England is already the sixth most densely populated country in the world.
It’s difficult to predict the future. But I predict Cameron’s great speech will be a vomitarium of lies, deceit and totally empty, undeliverable ‘promises’. You know, the kind of ‘promises’ that Home Secretary and future Tory leader, Theresa May, will later claim were only ‘comments’.
Come on Dave – entertain us! We need cheering up!
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�300m a year on non-existent children? Where exactly do you get this figure? Even the hysterical ranting Daily Mail only claims �31m – a figure, by the way, that is also plucked out of thin air.
For your information, and to nail this lie once and for all, I will reveal to you what the official data says.
HMRC dispenses the money and keeps the records of who is receiving what. After the best part of this year, I extracted (with the threat of an ICO investigation if they continued to stonewall me) a reply from the HMRC which included this information:
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Date 29 October 2014
Our ref FOI 2701/14
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000
I refer to your request of 1 October 2014 for a review of the reply of the same date from my colleague Philip Hogan to your original request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) concerning child benefit paid to EU migrants.
Your request
Your original request to HMRC was as follows:
�On an annual basis � from May 2010:
Annually:
1. What is the total amount of benefits paid to EU migrants?
2. What proportion of welfare spending is paid to EU migrants claiming benefits?
3. What proportion of total tax revenue is paid to EU migrants claiming benefits?
4. What is the total amount of child benefit paid to EU migrants living in the UK that have their children living elsewhere in the EU for the years:
– May 2010-May 2011
– May 2011-May 2012
– May 2012-May 2013
– May 2013-May 2014
5. What proportion of welfare spending is paid in child benefit to children living abroad?
6. What proportion of total tax revenue is paid in child benefit to children living abroad?�
I have been advised that when HMRC makes an award of child benefit under EC Regulation 883/2004 in respect of children living in another Member State, such cases are logged in a database which also records the number of children covered by that award. However, information about how much is paid in each case is not entered into that database and is therefore not centrally captured and collated. As HMRC�s original reply pointed out, in order to obtain a fully accurate reply to your principal question, it would be necessary physically to check each record relating to each ongoing award of child benefit under the EC Regulation. This is because not all awards of UK family benefits under the EC Regulation are made at the full UK rate but may vary depending on which Member State has primary competence for the payment of such benefits � this may be either the UK or the Member State where the children reside � and the level of those benefits in each relevant Member State.
At this point, I should make clear that the �31 million suggested in recent press reports (the Daily Mail) appears to be a calculation based simply on the number of children in the Ministerial reply to Parliamentary Questions multiplied by the rates of UK child benefit, which as explained may not always be payable in awards under the EC Regulation. I can confirm that the estimate was not provided by HMRC.
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Neither the DWP, HMRC, ONS or HM Treasury keeps these records, though everybody thinks they know what they are and forms an opinion based on nothing but fantasy fabricated information which does nothing to inform them of the facts and merely reinforces their own prejudices.
And by the way, HMRC has stated the number of Child Benefit claims from EU migrants has decreased from last year and only about 3% of EU migrants claim any UK benefits at all (down from about 5%).
Try getting some official data yourself from any or all the government departments involved before spouting off about “�300 million” or any other ludicrous assertion helpfully supplied by that fountain of unbiased truth, the Daily Mail.
I have changed the figure. However, I believe your claim that only 3% of EU migrants claim any UK benefits doesn’t include tax credits, which are essentially benefits, and the tax credits claimed by EU migrants cost us about �1.6bn a year.