We also wish to ensure the United Kingdom remains committed to fulfilling its international obligations as a safe haven for anyone suffering, or at risk of suffering, persecution for their political or religious views, or because of their actual or perceived race, gender or sexual orientation.
To prevent abuse of the British Benefit System from so called "Benefit Tourism" by immigrants from other EU Member States (and to limit the expansion of far right wing policy) an immigrant from an EU State shall not be entitled to receive Financial or other UK Tax Payer funded Benefit unless the immigrant has a minimum UK employment record of at least xxx [period TBD] months. We propose that all EU immigrants continue to receive the state funded benefits of their country of origin, paid for by the government of their country of origin until such time as the immigrant qualifies to receive UK Tax Payer Funded State Benefits. We recognise this will require an EU mechanism to function properly and we will look to promote that policy as a "fair for all" policy through the EU and until that is adopted we shall instigate a unilateral policy to protect the UK national interest until such time as an EU wide policy is in place.
The state should be able to honour deceased individuals in ways that the current Honours System does not allow (eg remove the specific number of places within the Order of the Bath which prevents the ability to grant knighthoods to the deceased).
I accept that benefit tourism is something people worry about, but I am not at all sure it's a real problem with evidence it actually happens. As far as I can tell, both the EU and CReAM have concluded that it's not much of a problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_tourism has some links.
http://www.housing-rights.info/habitual-residence-test.php is fascinating, and outlines what the current state of affairs is, I think.
Thing is... Benefit Tourism is something that may or may not be happening in reality but so many people believe it is that they are running in their droves to the right wing parties like UKIP. Parties that adopt a well defined policy on controlling "benefit" tourism will once again be seen by those people as viable and voteworthy. UKIP wants to react by villifying immigrants. A sensible party can still welcome immigrants and be subject to the advantages that immigrants bring to a diverse open society while demonstrating an ability to put controls in place that would - if needed - limit and control any potential abuse. BINGO - you have taken the heat out of UKIP's sole reason to exist..
On 12 October 2014 21:48, James Smith [email protected] wrote:
I accept that benefit tourism is something people worry about, but I am not at all sure it's a real problem with evidence it actually happens. As far as I can tell, both the EU and CReAM http://cream-migration.org have concluded that it's not much of a problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_tourism has some links.
http://www.housing-rights.info/habitual-residence-test.php is fascinating, and outlines what the current state of affairs is, I think.
— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/pull/233#issuecomment-58821896 .
I'm not sure that buying into the narrative of false problems helps us. In a bit of "argument ad absurdum" or whatever it's called, we could take a strong stance against alien invasion from Mars, but it wouldn't add anything useful.
There are plenty of parties joining UKIP's narrative; I don't think we need to do that here. 👎 from me purely on the basis of trying to avoid lending credibility to illusory problems. Perhaps that's naïve.
You can see that the idea I have mooted is now mainstream and it is not A UKIP policy. It's fair to restrict recent eu immigrant access to uk benefits for a time to prevent abuse. It's frustrating that the response to my idea at the time was slam dunked as a right wing absurd idea - because it isn't.
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On 5 Jan 2015, at 08:06, James Smith [email protected] wrote:
I'm not sure that buying into the narrative of false problems helps us. In a bit of "argument ad absurdum" or whatever it's called, we could take a strong stance against alien invasion from Mars, but it wouldn't add anything useful.
There are plenty of parties joining UKIP's narrative; I don't think we need to do that here. from me purely on the basis of trying to avoid lending credibility to illusory problems. Perhaps that's naïve.
— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.
Sorry if you feel it was slam dunked for being a right-wing idea, that wasn't my intention, certainly, and I don't think I implied it - apologies if I did. I was simply trying to discuss whether it was a problem that actually needed solving, that's all. All comments are meant constructively in the spirit of open debate.
The link above (http://www.housing-rights.info/habitual-residence-test.php) discusses what restrictions on benefits for new migrants already exist - are you proposing more than that in terms of minimum period of residence?
Once again though (and again, constructively), I'd say that simply because an idea is mainstream does not make it a real issue.
Closing this one, as we're over the 90-day limit with no further movement. Feel free to resubmit if you want to reopen the debate!
The OpenPolitics Manifesto
@Bjorks - over 9 years ago