Thursday, September 29, 2011

Surprise, surprise

When Labour were last in government they commissioned a report on just who was claiming jobless benefits. It naturally told them what everyone knew and so they appear to have tried to hush it up.
Express.
MIGRANTS to the UK are more likely to be claiming unemployment benefits than the native population, newly found studies for the last Labour government have revealed.
A report showed that while just over 3.7 per cent of the local population claimed jobless payments, 5.7 per cent of immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria took the handouts along with 5.3 per cent of migrants from outside the EU and 3.7 percent of eastern Europeans who joined the EU in 2004.
The study, one of five commissioned by Labour and never published until today, belies the claim that migrants come to the UK for work.
Current Ministers accuse Labour of an “orchestrated cover-up” over the reports which lay bare the folly of its open-door migration policy.
The research was ordered by the Department for Communities and Local Government in the dying days of Gordon Brown at No 10.
At the start of the 1980s “net immigration” for the UK was minus 42,000. By 1995 the figure had risen to 9,200.
But a decade after Labour swept to power in 1997, it had mushroomed to plus 178,000 a year.
Housing benefit was the most popular handout. Nine out of 10 claimants from A2 and A8 countries had their rent paid by the state as did 85 per cent of other migrants. For UK-born claimants the figure was 81.6 percent. 
Thing is, a lot of immigrants do come to work, but fail to leave once the work runs out and the benefits system encourages this. You get your rent paid, your council tax paid and you get pocket money from the state for just simply claiming you're looking for work. From an immigrant from a poor country with little or no benefits, what's not to like?
Thing was, the vast majority of the country already knew this and had been saying this only to be derided for being bigots by various leftists and liberals as well as the then Labour leader himself on tv.
The benefits system itself was only supposed to be a safety net for the unemployed, yet it has become a millstone around the neck of the nation making those who don't work far better off than those who are on low paid jobs. Yet just the other day we had the now Labour leader telling the world that the then Labour government had only made a mistake with some immigrants, notably the ones who hadn't joined the EU during the time when mass uncontrolled immigration allowed by Labour happened.
That they tried to suppress this report is not surprising, that they continue to deny there is a problem is not surprising, that they seek to blame anyone but themselves for a problem of their creation is the least surprising of all.
Labour really should be unelectable for what they did, it is to the shame of the current government that they aren't.

2 annotations:

Anonymous said...

Another (hopefully) nail in the coffin of Labour, the Party that liked to say yes to every Tom, Uri and Mukhta who said they want to come to the UK and never have to work again.

Michael Fowke said...

@Anonymous - yet another nail?! How many nails is it going to take?