Immigrants 'wrongly paid benefits'

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.

Chris Grayling said he was shocked to find the current system
does not record the nationality of benefit claimants

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.

©Press Association 2012

IMMIGRATION 'NOT LINKED TO JOBLESS'

Immigration has little or no impact on the number of unemployed in the UK, a report said today.

The number of immigrants coming to the UK is not linked with the number of people claiming jobless benefits, the study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr) showed.

But it conceded that it is still not known whether an increase in the number of migrants coming to the UK leads to a fall in the number of low-skilled jobs for British workers which is masked by more jobs for highly skilled Britons.

The report comes after the campaign group Migration Watch UK said it would be a "remarkable coincidence" if there was no link between a 600,000 rise since May 2004 in the number of Eastern European migrants working in the UK and a 450,000 rise in youth unemployment in the same period.

Migrants from the so-called A8 countries which joined the EU almost eight years ago - Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - "have tended to be disproportionately young, well-educated, prepared to work for low wages and imbued with a strong work ethic", the campaigners said.

But today's report said: "We find no association between migrant inflows and claiming unemployment.

"The results show a very small negative and generally insignificant correlation between the migrant inflow rate and the change in the claimant count rate.

"A two percentage point increase in the migrant inflow rate, akin in magnitude to the large and sudden inflow of A8 migrants in the years 2004-2006, would, according to these estimates, be associated with a fall in the claimant count rate in the order of only 0.02 percentage points.

"For all practical purposes, these results suggest that migration has essentially no impact on claimant count unemployment."

There were also no signs of a more adverse impact of immigration during the recent recession, the report said.

But it added: "We cannot exclude that migrant inflows may be having positive effects on the employment of highly skilled native labour (because of complementarities) and negative effects on low-skilled native workers (because of substitutability) which net out in the aggregate."

The study looked at the number of migrants who were given National Insurance numbers between 2002/3 and 2010/11, and compared these with the number of people claiming unemployment benefits.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "We have already made sweeping changes to tackle the uncontrolled immigration of the past.

"We have limited non-EU workers coming to the UK, with latest figures showing a year on year fall in work visas issued.

"We will shortly announce reforms of the family migration and settlement routes."

She went on: "We are also ensuring graduates and the workforce get the opportunities and skills they need so that they can find work."

YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT LINK QUESTIONED WITH IMMIGRATION

The link between immigration from Eastern Europe and youth unemployment was questioned in a report by campaigners today.

The number of migrants working in the UK who were born in Eastern Europe rose by 600,000 since the so-called A8 countries joined the EU in May 2004, while youth unemployment rose by almost 450,000 in the same period, Migration Watch UK said.

Sir Andrew Green, the campaign group's chairman, said it would be "a very remarkable coincidence if there was no link at all between them".

Sir Andrew Green - blames immigration for higher youth unemployment

Migrants from the A8 countries - Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - "have tended to be disproportionately young, well-educated, prepared to work for low wages and imbued with a strong work ethic", he said.

Youth unemployment in the UK increased from 575,000 in the first quarter of 2004 to 1,016,000 in the third quarter of 2011, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.

Over the same period, the number of workers from the A8 grew by 600,000.

Sir Andrew conceded that measuring any impact of immigration on youth unemployment was "not an exact science".

He said: "Correlation is not, of course, proof of causation but, given the positive employability characteristics and relative youth of migrants from these countries, it is implausible and counter-intuitive to conclude - as the previous Government and some economists have done - that A8 migration has had virtually no impact on UK youth unemployment in this period.

"We hear a great deal from employers about the value of immigrant labour, especially from Eastern Europe, but there are also costs some of which have undoubtedly fallen on young British born workers."

A Home Office spokesman said: "This Government is working to reduce net migration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands, levels we last saw in the 1990s.

"Controlled migration can bring benefits to the UK economy, but uncontrolled immigration can put pressure on public services, infrastructure and community relations.

"That is why we are ensuring graduates and the workforce get the opportunities and skills they need so that they can find work, and why we have maintained restrictions on workers from Romania and Bulgaria, and made it clear we will always introduce transitional controls on new European Union member states to stop unregulated access to British jobs."

Danny Sriskandarajah, director of the Royal Commonwealth Society, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme he was sceptical about the impact immigration had had on the youth unemployment figures.

And he said: "The challenge here is to skill up young people to get them into the jobs they want to get.

"The fundamental issue here I think is about matching the right skills and motivations with the right jobs in the economy - we have a supply side problem.

"We don't necessarily have the jobs in the economy that young British people want. If we do want to tackle youth unemployment then we perhaps need to think about structural reforms in the economy so we don't create these dirty, dangerous jobs that immigrants are being attracted into."

LABOUR ATTACKS BORDER SECURITY MOVE

Ministers were accused by Labour of encouraging illegal immigrants by ending the practice of fingerprinting those caught trying to enter the UK via the Channel Tunnel.

Immigration Minister Damien Green: Fingerprint records have little value

Immigration Minister Damian Green said the record had proved of little value in practice and that border officials would now have more time to search vehicles for offenders.

But shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper attacked the change and said it sent a signal to stowaways that they should "feel free to keep trying" to enter the UK.

Border security has been under the spotlight since it emerged last year that border controls for non-EU nationals had been relaxed - leading a top official to quit.

Mr Green confirmed the change of policy in a letter to Tory MP Roger Gale after he was alerted to it by a constituent who works for the UK Border Agency.

He said that while fingerprints could identify previously discovered illegal immigrants, it was "generally of limited value in helping to secure their removal" if they got into the UK.

UKBA believed the change "will enable its staff to focus on the high priority of searching vehicles and therefore prevent such individuals from even getting to the UK", he wrote.

Yvette Cooper: raises security concerns

A spokesman for the PCS union told The Sunday Times that the end of fingerprinting appeared to be an admission by Mr Green that cuts had left UKBA with insufficient staff.

Calling for an urgent explanation, Ms Cooper said it raised serious concerns about ministers' attitudes to border security.

"By not even bothering to fingerprint anyone, the Government is sending a signal that this is not a serious offence and people should feel free to keep trying. And it makes it harder to identify illegal migrants later on," she said.

"Time and again it seems that checks are being weakened and corners cut."

A UKBA spokesman said: "We work very closely with the French authorities to counter illegal migration - all clandestines are handed straight to the French border police.

"Our controls across the Channel continue to show significant improvements with a 70% reduction in the number of attempts to cross illegally between 2009 and 2011."

Mr Gale said he would raise the issue with ministers when the Commons returns from its Christmas break this week.

PA 2012