Benefit payments to foreign nationals - ONS data

Having just watched a rather aggressive and heated debate on GB News about non UK nationals claiming benefits based on the latest ONS and DWP data, I thought I would fact check against the ONS data. The debate was between Robert Bates (Research Director for the Centre For Migration Control) and  Jonathan Portes (Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the School of Politics & Economics of King's College, London).  Jonathan Portes was of the opinion that the data said foreign nationals were less likely to claim benefits than British citizens whereas Roberts Bates interpreted the data in the complete opposite manner.

Here's the facts

1.298  Million foreign nationals are claiming Universal Credit  (approx £6.23 BILLION per year).

Foreign nationals accounted for 21.5% of unemployed working age individuals between Jan and March 2025.   524,598 were receiving in-work Universal Credit (the definition of in-work is that they were working less than 16 hours per week) while 759,375 were out-of-work claimants.

So the argument on GB News started off about whether "Immigration is good for the UK economy".

So are foreign born nationals more likely to be unemployed and drain on the UK economy?

The UK population is allegedly 69.2Million (I would dispute this and think there's about another 20 Million hidden people). But anyway lets use the official number.

16% of the population are non UK nationals. So that means there are 11 Million non UK nationals are in the UK.

So in Jan 25 there were 7.5 Million people on Universal Credit.

You have to be over 18 to be on Universal Credit so let's remove children from the population data. There are just over 14 million under 18s in the UK so the adjusted population is 55.2 Million. We dont know the percentage of foreign nationals in the UK that are under 18 but they would be included in the 14 Million number.

So there are 1.3 Million foreign nationals claiming Universal Credit out of a claimant population of 7.5 Million so that's 17.34% yet foreign nationals account for 16% of the population so my conclusion from this is that foreign nationals are more likely to be claiming Universal Credit than non foreign nationals.

Foreign nationals accounted for 21.5% of unemployed working age individuals between Jan and March 2025. So foreign individuals are 16% of the population yet 21.5% of them are unemployed so again they are over indexing as a percentage of the population.  OK let's remove under 18s from the overall population number to make sure they are not skewing the numbers.  So that reduces the percentage of foreign nationals who are unemployed to 17.15%.  Again that's higher than the 16% of the population so foreign nationals are more likely to claiming unemployment benefit.

As a cross check I  checked how many people are unemployed.  According to the "UK Labour Market Statistics - The House of Commons Library"  Jul 25 report there are 1.67 Million people unemployed yet the ONS data shows there were  759,375 foreign national out-of-work claimants.

So 759k/1.67M = 45% of people unemployed are foreign nationals.

I suspect the above is incorrect. If it is then we have a problem.   I suspect the ONS and the government hasnt got a clue and that data quality is appalling.  There are probably significantly more than 1.67 Million unemployed and it's some "definition" eg working less than 20 hours per week or something like that in order to be excluded from the numbers.

Anyway assuming the ONS foreign claimant data is correct then it clearly shows that immigration is not necessarily a good thing and that they are proportionally more likely to claim benefits and be unemployed. 

It also probably shows that foreign nationals are better at claiming benefits than UK nationals !

Similarly there are 33,000 children living overseas receiving  child benefit. In 2012 the vast majority of these claimants were Polish.  These claimants account for £44 Million per year of tax payers money.

If Robert Bates or Jonathan Portes are reading - feel free to comment and share your position. 

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Well the government does seem to be trying to close these holes in the leaking bucket.

The government said 2,600 people who had left the UK but still claimed the [child] benefit had already been removed from the welfare system.

Tens of thousands more people who are fraudulently or erroneously claiming child benefit while living outside the UK now face having their payments stopped [but not recovered] as part of the government’s crackdown.

The Cabinet Office is increasing the number of officials working on stopping child benefit fraud and error to 200 from next month, following a pilot programme in which 15 investigators stopped £17m in wrongful payments in less than a year.

So there are 15 investigators (civil servants).  Let's say they are paid £55,000 per year.  With benefits like final salary  pension etc the cost of their employment package is about £100,000 per year.  There are 15 investigators so they are costing tax payers £1.5 Million per year.  So if they are stopping £17M in fraud each year that's good value.  

The money saved however doesnt quite add up.  So £17M has been saved from 2,600 claimants which is £6,538 per claimant. Child benefit fot the first child is £26.05 per week so £1,354 per year. The second child is £17.25 per week and there is no payment for additional children. So if all claimants had 2x children that would be £2,251 per year yet the saving is £6,538. So either the government numbers are wrong, the are calculating some 5 year projection or the "saving" number is not actually a saving but the scale of the fraud ie 3+ years worth of claims going undetected.

However they are increasing the investigation team size to 200.  So now the cost of the team is £20Million per year. Fingers cross they save significantly more than £20Million else the cost of investigation will be much higher than the tax savings.....

Why do we need investigators anyway?  Surely if passports are scanned on departure (or there's no return flight) then we know who has left the country? Simply suspend payments when someone leaves and resume them if they return.

Also where where is the deterrent?  If fraudulent benefit claims are simply stopped and not recovered or fraud legal proceedings pursued or better still refusal of entry into the UK until the fraud is repaid etc then there's little deterrent not to claim in the hope you get away with it.

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10th Nov 2025

Well it seems the £17M benefit savings was a fake number.  When the investors dug deeper 46% of the claims were legitimate.  The problem is we didnt have a clue whether someone was living here or not.  When the benefits were stopped the people hadnt left the country but were in the UK.

It does suggest that maybe the problem could be big but knowing who is in the UK and who has left is a mess.

However in the meantime the government is employing 200 more people to investigate claims....The staff costs exceed the genuinely fake savings considerably.