No, £500 billion isn't paid every year to non-U.K. nationals in welfare costs

Context

A claim that 80 percent of U.K. immigrants rely on welfare, each costing £50,000 per year and leading to a total expense of nearly £500 billion, has been spreading on social media.

It was shared on X (formerly known as Twitter) in June 2024, with one post (archived here) receiving over 746,000 views and another (archived here) getting more than 436,000 views.

Screenshot of a post circulating on X. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)

By early July 2024, similar posts appeared on Facebook, where the narrative received slightly less attention than on X but was still widely spread.

"It's destroying our economy," one of the posts (archived here) stated.

In fact

The actual data from the U.K. government paints a very different picture. According to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the proportion of working-age non-UK nationals claiming benefits is significantly lower than that of U.K. nationals. As of November 2020, approximately 16 percent of working-age benefit claimants were non-UK nationals, while 84 percent were U.K. nationals.

It is important to note that the DWP does not seem to hold such specific statistics post-2021; it has only published immigration figures and issued National Insurance cards – nothing on benefits.

However, the idea that the total cost of welfare for immigrants reaches close to £500 billion annually is inaccurate. The entire social security budget for all residents in the U.K. is much less than this amount.

"We do not pay £500 billion each year to non-UK nationals in welfare costs. This figure greatly exceeds the amount paid annually to all benefit claimants, which was £225.20 billion in 2022-23," Olly Clitheroe from the DWP Press Office told Logically Facts.

Additionally, Clitheroe clarified that non-British or Irish citizens can only claim publicly funded benefits if they have been granted access by the Home Office.

"Individuals can claim contributory and statutory benefits, including where they have a visa which does not allow access to public funds or where they have the necessary national insurance contributions or periods of employment," Clitheroe explained.

In 2018, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) commissioned research by Oxford Economics. The research demonstrated that EEA migrants consistently contributed more in taxes than they received in benefits and public services.

For instance, the average U.K.-based EEA migrant contributed approximately £2,300 more to public finances annually than the average U.K. adult in the financial year 2016/17. Over their lifetime in the U.K., an EEA migrant arriving in 2016 is expected to contribute a net positive amount of £78,000.

Moreover, the findings indicated that EEA migrants contributed a total net positive amount of £4.7 billion to U.K. public finances in the 2016/17 fiscal year alone.

The verdict

The claim that 80 percent of immigrants in the U.K. remain dependent on welfare, which costs £50,000 per person annually and totals close to £500 billion, is false.