Immigrants 'wrongly paid benefits'

(UKPA) – 25 minutes ago

Benefits are wrongly being paid to more than 5,000 immigrants with no right to claim state help, research carried out by the Government suggests.

They are among some 371,000 arrivals to this country on welfare identified by an exercise to match benefit, border control and tax records for the first time.

Records are not kept of the nationality of benefit claimants in what ministers described as a "scandalous omission" by the previous Labour administration.

The Government plans to begin doing so when Universal Credit is introduced from 2013.

The data-matching project found 371,000 working-age benefit claimants were non-UK nationals when they first applied for a National Insurance number, 258,000 of them from outside the European Economic Area.

So far, detailed work has been done only on a sample of 9,000 of the latter group - three quarters of whose records were able to be matched. It found 54% were now British citizens and most others had an immigration status that allowed welfare claims.

But two in every 100 appeared to have "no lawful immigration status", the work by the Department for Work and Pensions, UK Border Agency and HM Revenue and Customs found. Around 125 cases are now under investigation.

Employment minister Chris Grayling said: "We will root out those claimants who can not prove their immigration status and in turn they will be stripped of their benefits. I was shocked to discover that the current system does not record the nationality of benefit claimants and we are urgently taking steps to make sure we know exactly how many non-UK nationals are claiming UK benefits."

Immigration minister Damian Green said: "These findings uncover a worrying issue we have inherited, which is why we've ordered urgent work to pursue claimants suspected of abuse and to withdraw their benefits if they cannot prove they are entitled to claim."

Those found to be abusing the system will also have their details sent to other agencies including local councils to ensure other benefits were also stopped, the Treasury said.

The Press Association: Immigrants 'wrongly paid benefits'