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6 Things Cameron Ignored To Scaremonger About Benefit Tourism

6 Things Cameron Ignored To Scaremonger About Benefit Tourism
Asa Bennett
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Prime Minister David Cameron makes a speech on Europe, in central London, where he promised an in/out referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union by the end of 2017, if the Conservatives win the next general election.
Stefan Rousseau/PA Archive

David Cameron has unveiled a further clampdown on European migrants' ability to claim benefits in a bid to tackle what he called the "magnetic pull" of Britain's benefits system and put "British people first".

EU migrants will now have the amount of time in which they can claim benefits halved to three months unless they have serious job prospects, in a move Cameron would hope will help lure back voters who drifted away to back the eurosceptic rival Ukip.

Talking tough on"benefit tourism", the term for EU migrants who are said to come to Britain to claim benefits rather than work, may be politically convenient for the Prime Minister, but there is a wealth of experts and studies that utterly undermines such rhetoric.

HuffPost UK presents six awkward things Cameron ignored in order to scaremonger about "benefit tourists".

Benefit Tourism: 6 Damning Ways The Coalition Is Exaggerating It
The EU says migrants draw less benefits(01 of06)
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The European Commission, in its report "Impact of mobile EU citizens on national social security systems", found last October that "mobile EU citizens are less likely to receive disability and unemployment benefits in most countries studied". (credit:Oli Scarff via Getty Images)
Experts agree they take MUCH less benefits(02 of06)
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Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research and former Cabinet Office chief economist, wrote: "Migrants represent about 14% of all those of working age, only 7% of out-of-work claimants. In other words, migrants are about half as likely as non-migrants to be claiming out-of-work benefits." (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)
IDS exaggerated the cost of benefit tourism by 92%(03 of06)
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Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith was forced to massively revise down his estimate of how much it would cost UK taxpayers to allow more foreigners to claim benefits by 92%, down from £2 billion a year to £155 million.
Native Brits are much more likely to claim benefits(04 of06)
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Romania's ambassador to the UK Dr Ion Jinga pointed out that the official figures show that a much larger proportion of the UK population is on the dole (9.5%) than Romanian immigrants in the country (1.45%). (credit:Gareth Fuller/PA Wire)
English academics rubbish fears of benefit tourism(05 of06)
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According to academics at University College London's Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), fears that "benefit tourists" were coming to the UK with no intention of working were "disconnected from reality".
And so does the government's own research(06 of06)
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The government's Migration Advisory Committee dismissed claims about "benefit tourists" coming to Britain, finding: "There is little evidence to support the so-called welfare magnet hypothesis as a migration driver across EU countries". (credit:WPA Pool via Getty Images)
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