Britain 'has no figures on EU welfare tourists'

By  Bruno Waterfield, Brussels

The British government keeps no figures on how many European Union nationals claim welfare payments in the UK, a classified Home Office document has admitted, despite repeated complaints about "benefit tourism" and social security abuse. 

The document is the UK's response to a European Commission demand for evidence of claims by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, that some European migrants abuse the EU's free movement laws and become an "unacceptable burden" after travelling to Britain to claim benefits. 

In the eight page text, which has been seen by The Telegraph, the Home Office concedes that it is unable to state the number of EU nationals claiming welfare compared to Britons on social security benefits over a "given period". Nor can it give figures showing the number of EU migrants making fraudulent benefit claims. 

"We consider that these questions place too much emphasis on quantitative evidence," says the document, seen by The Daily Telegraph. "The UK does not currently impose a registration requirement upon Union citizens who enter the UK and exercise free movement rights." 

Data on the nationality of claimants for social welfare benefits is not routinely published, it adds, as there is not routinely a "nationality marker" attached to them. 

The admission, in a text submitted to Brussels last month, risks undermining British calls for tighter restrictions on welfare immigrants as EU interior ministers meet to discuss the issue on Tuesday. With German, Dutch and Austrian support, Mrs May has asked the EU to overhaul freedom of movement rights to make it more difficult to claim residency in another country and to make it easier to deport wrong-doers. 

There are 2.3 million EU migrants living in Britain, with 155,000 new arrivals from the EU last year under the "free movement" rules, up by 90 per cent from the 82,000 who came in 2011. The number of migrants is expected to rise further next year, when all restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians travelling to Britain will be lifted. 

An EU migrant must show that they have been in work and have the intention to settle to earn the "right to reside" qualification for benefits. Migrants who have not worked, and are not dependant on someone who is working, are judged to be a "burden on public funds" and fail to qualify. 

Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP for Clacton, described as "mind-numbing" the revelation that British authorities do not keep the welfare claimant statistics. "All these acres of officials and no one thought to collect this basic information," he said. "The British state seems Byzantine in its ineptness." 

Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, said: "It is hard to know if the Coalition Government is farcically incompetent or would rather just not know." 

Chris Davies, a Liberal Democrat MEP for North West England, insisted that Britain must provide evidence if the EU was to take the claims of benefit tourism seriously. "The Home Secretary is pandering to extremists by making claims about 'benefit tourism' that she cannot justify," he said. "It's clear that Theresa May hasn't got a clue whether there is a real problem or not." 

The Home Office was able in its document to identify only one case of "fraudulent benefit claims": the 2012 conviction and jailing of Lavinia Olmazu, an EU national from Romania, who helped a gang funnel £2.9 million in false benefits claims to 170 Romanian gypsies. 

The document reports that despite no conclusive evidence of benefit tourism there is a public perception of a problem: the Home Office 

received almost 300 letters from members of the public which touched on the abuse of free movement rights in the three months to February 2013. 

Civil servants are now exploring whether they can provide "ad-hoc information" on the number of "mobile" EU citizens receiving social welfare benefits in Britain, the document adds. 

Last night a government spokesman said the system would be improved when the new "Universal Credit" system of benefits, currently on trial in four locations around Manchester, is rolled out nationwide. "We are planning to record the nationality of benefit claimants to ensure we have a better picture of who is claiming benefits," the spokesman said.