Labour faces fury over claim ‘£10.2bn in benefits handed to foreign nationals’ | Politics | News
Labor has faced anger over how much benefits are given to foreign nationals. Rupert Lowe, leader of Restore Britain, claimed in the House of Commons on April 27 that a “staggering” £10.1bn of the £61.2bn spent on universal credit in 2024 was “gifted to foreign nationals”.
Data released in 2025 revealed that as of June of that year, 83.6% of those at UC were British and Irish citizens, living or working in the UK without any restrictions on their immigration status. 9.7% (770,379) and 2.7% (211,090) of people with EU Settlement Scheme settled status had permission to remain in Britain indefinitely. 1.5% (118,749) and 0.7% (54,156) of refugees were persons arriving through safe and legal humanitarian routes, including resettlement programs for Ukrainians and Afghans.
Meanwhile, 75,267 people, or 1% of the total, had limited permission to remain in the UK and 65,346 people were no longer receiving UC payments or had no registered immigration status.
Mr Lowe added: “Does the Minister agree that the solution is really quite simple? We should ban all foreigners from claiming any benefits, remove immigrants who cannot support themselves financially from our country and give that money back to the tax-paying British men and women who actually keep our economy going?
In response, Andrew Western, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said: “I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Mr. Gentleman’s point of view about people who have been here for years, contributed, paid their taxes and then sometimes claim some help from a state to which they have been paying for decades.”
He later claimed that the figure cited by Mr Lowe was a “complete overlap and significant overestimation” and that some of those receiving the money may have been British or Irish.
Mr Western said: “If he does not understand that it is impossible to suggest that the full amount was paid directly to foreign nationals, he shows ignorance because the figure he uses is taken from the total number of households with a foreign national in it and many of the individual claimants may actually be British or Irish nationals.”
