New figures have revealed that only 84,000 European Union (EU) migrant families on tax credits will be impacted by British Prime Minister David Cameron’s “emergency brake” – a key part of his EU renegotiation deal announced this week.
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs told the Guardian newspaper that “The number of EU families that claimed tax credits in 2013/14 and had been issued a NINO [national insurance number] during the previous four years was 84,000”.
This means that just 7 per cent of all migrants that entered the United Kingdom during the years 2010-2014 would be affected by the measure, and even fewer “families”. The figure shows that what the British tax payer would save in terms of migrant benefits would be a paltry sum of money.
Mr. Cameron’s “success” on the deal, while hailed by Europhiles, is questionable as he initially set out to scrap migrant benefits access for four years altogether. Instead, he got a gradual increase in migrant benefits over four years.
The Guardian notes that in November 2015, Mr. Cameron claimed 40 per cent of recent EU migrants claimed in-work benefits.
Jonathan Portes, principal research fellow at the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, said: “This new data shows that the prime minister’s claim that 40 per cent of recently arrived European migrants were dependent on benefits was at best selective and misleading.”