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European migrants 'will be denied housing benefit if they are on job-seekers allowance' | European migrants 'will be denied housing benefit if they are on job-seekers allowance' |
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People moving to this country from Europe who are unable to find work will be denied housing benefit, according to two senior Conservative cabinet members. | People moving to this country from Europe who are unable to find work will be denied housing benefit, according to two senior Conservative cabinet members. |
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and Home Secretary Theresa May, in an article in the Daily Mail, said that new European arrivals will not receive any state-funded help for rent if they are claiming job-seekers allowance. | |
Working immigrants who lose their job will be given six months before their housing benefit is taken away. | |
Under emergency regulations that took effect on January 1, all new EU migrants now have to wait for at least three months before they can claim out-of-work benefits. | |
In their article, Mr Duncan Smith and Mrs May say: “For those migrants who do come here, we’re ensuring they are unable to take unfair advantage of our system by accessing benefits as soon as they arrive.” | |
The article says that a new £26,000-a-year cap on household benefit claims has affected 33,000 families and encouraged up to 19,000 to return to work. | |
It adds that a limit on economic migrants from outside the EU, changes to the rules on family and student visas and a crackdown on bogus colleges have helped bring down net migration by nearly a third from its peak. | |
In other changes, landlords will be fined up to £3,000 if they rent a property to an illegal immigrant and non-EU migrants will be expected to pay a levy of £200 a year to use the NHS. | |
The changes to the housing benefit rules will not affect UK and Irish Republic nationals. | |
European nationals who have been working in the UK, and are subsequently made redundant and claim benefits, will not be affected. | |
Mr Duncan Smith and Ms May’s article accuses Labour of “a shameful betrayal of thousands of British workers”. | |