Department for Work and Pensions figures show that in early 2026 roughly 1.3 million people on Universal Credit, about 16 per cent of a record total of some 8.4 million claimants, lacked British or Irish citizenship or right of abode. Foreigners in other words. The total Universal Credit caseload itself has climbed to historic highs, with average household payments around £1,090 a month, about the same as pensioners who have paid in all their working lives.
At the same time the British government continues to lavish billions on asylum support and accommodation. Official figures, almost certainly on the low side, put the direct bill near £4 billion, driven by hotels bills, cash subsistence and processing. Indirect bills for policing and health are into the many millions. At the same time, foreign aid is running at roughly £13 – £14 billion, but with some minor reductions planned by 2027. Enter Mad Ed Miliband talking of restoring the small cuts and even increasing aid, unconstrained by fiscal reality and public finances that remain under severe strain.
Add the direct Universal Credit (UC) payments flowing to foreigners, the asylum system costs and foreign aid and the burden on the taxpayer runs into the tens of billions annually. Exact apportionment of UC spending by immigration or national status is not published in detail every month, yet the scale is unmistakable with well over a million foreigners claim benefits and receiving an average amount that represents a multi-billion commitment every year. Asylum alone has absorbed sums that would transform domestic services. Aid continues while the UK posts persistent excessive borrowing and the national debt nears £3 trillion, around 94 per cent of GDP. Britain is, in effect, borrowing money to give away to foreigners while native households face stagnant or falling real incomes, stretched housing, NHS waiting lists and rising taxes.
This is economic lunacy. A country that cannot house its young people, that struggles to fund social care for its elderly, will not invest in national infrastructure and watches productivity lag cannot underwrite benefits for foreigners in any form while its own public finances require continuous gilt issuance. The welfare system was designed as a national insurance-style safety net for citizens who have paid in. Extending it on the same terms to foreigners, combined with high volumes of arrivals and hardly any deportations, converts it into an open-ended transfer mechanism. Hotels for asylum seekers at £100-plus per person per night, while working families cannot find affordable flats, is not compassion, it is grand larceny. Every pound spent servicing this system is a pound not available for British pensioners, the disabled, or infrastructure that raises living standards at home.
The complete absence of a democratic mandate compounds this offence exponentially. Repeated polls show that the majority of the British public regard net migration as too high, want it reduced, and are angry about the fiscal and social impacts of recent inflows. Housing pressure, NHS strain and welfare costs rank high among concerns. Support for unrestricted access to benefits for non-citizens is limited. Very limited. Yet successive governments have overseen record net migration, expanded the Universal Credit caseload, and maintained foreign aid. The political class has operated as if public opinion is an inconvenient detail rather than the foundation of legitimacy.
Call it what it is: a form of totalitarianism. Policy is set by officials, courts, international commitments and elite consensus that treat democratic pushback as illegitimate. Border control is presented as impossible. Aid targets are defended as moral imperatives even as the same politicians lecture the public about fiscal responsibility. Dissent is often met with accusations of xenophobia rather than argument about numbers, costs and trade-offs. When the public repeatedly signals that it wants lower numbers, faster processing, stricter conditions and domestic priority, and the system continues largely unchanged, consent has been hollowed out and has become government by theft and warped ideology.
Legal migrants who work, pay tax and integrate are one thing, and even their coming should be subject to the consent of the indigenous population. Large numbers of illegals arriving who then enter the welfare system, whose accommodation costs rocket, are another.
The British people are getting poorer in real terms because of policies pursued by both parties over the last three decades. Real disposable incomes have been squeezed by inflation, higher taxes and energy costs. Housing is scarcer and more expensive partly because of population growth outstripping supply. Public services are strained. In that context, continuing to borrow for transfers abroad that the electorate opposes is not generosity; it is theft from the future taxpayer. It is also strategically blind: a nation that cannot secure its borders or prioritise its citizens loses the cohesion required for any collective project, including genuine humanitarian effort.
The remedy is straightforward in principle and difficult only because the political class refuses it. Tighten eligibility for public funds so that settlement and benefits are paid only to British citizens or to foreigners only after, say, twenty years of contribution. End all accommodation and support for illegal aliens and introduce immediate deportation with no appeal. Abolish foreign aid completely. Above all, treat the clear public preference for lower immigration and domestic priority as binding rather than optional. Until that happens, the figures from the DWP, the Home Office and the Treasury will continue to document the same pattern: record caseloads, persistent spending, and a political establishment that prefers foreigners and virtue signalling.
A democracy that systematically ignores majority opinion on the scale and cost of migration and welfare will eventually face a reckoning. It is too late to expect the establishment to change AND restore consent and fiscal sanity. we must, therefore, force that reckoning soon or we will discover, too late, that the bill has already bankrupted the nation.
See Related Article Below
Britain Must Put Its Own Priorities First
JACK WATSON
Andy Burnham and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband have secretly plotted to reverse foreign aid cuts. The pair have privately signalled their intention to restore Britain’s international development spending to 0.7% of gross national income. The original target was slashed under Sir Keir Starmer‘s administration, falling from 0.5% to just 0.3% by 2027 to help plug gaps in defence spending. Now, top-level Labour figures are quietly plotting a course back to the multi-billion-pound commitment. According to economic experts at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), reaching the 0.7% threshold again would require an extra £13 billion a year. Inevitably, it would result in the government having to pile intense pressure on the Treasury to fund the massive spending spree through tax hikes or public borrowing. It will create a £13 billion black hole every year.
To add salt to the wound, last year, the government spent approximately £4 billion on total asylum accommodation and ‘support’, with £2.7 billion dedicated to housing costs. Thankfully, this government is actively cutting the budget, slashing the allocation for the new year by a whopping £388 million from the previous fiscal year. Why don’t they completely slash it? It is insulting that the government claims they are struggling to control the cost-of-living crisis, whilst they are willingly spending money which will not even benefit us.
The British people will be hit hard by this. The UK economy is already crumbling. Higher energy bills have driven UK inflation up to 2.9% in the year to July, the highest level in four months, according to new figures. Gas prices soared at the sharpest pace in almost four years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, leading to an increase in the cap on household energy bills in July. Energy costs surged after the US-Israel war with Iran began, which has restricted global oil supplies. In addition, Ofgem, the energy regulator, slapped a 13% increase on gas and electricity costs which will add £221 a year to the typical bill. Homes will also see a 4% increase in energy bills from October, which will take them to their highest levels.
Yet the government still wants to add more financial pressure on households by restoring the foreign aid budget to 0.7 % of national income, during one of the hardest periods of the year. That money will not benefit British taxpayers. Families will already be cautious about turning their thermostats up, but these investments are going to increase their financial struggle. In addition to the cost-of-living crisis and an increase in bills, the UK also has many underfunded areas which desperately need a financial top-up.
There is a substantial housing crisis in the UK, with young people finding it extremely difficult to buy a house. A study shows more than 130,000 young households are stuck on social housing waiting lists in England. Overall, over 1.34 million households are on local authority housing registers, and research from youth charities shows that roughly 124,000 young people aged 16 to 24 face or risk homelessness annually. A GOV.UK study reveals that, out of the £60 billion spent on the housing sector, only £14.9 billion is funded into building new homes, council housing, and affordable supply. The money being squandered on other countries could easily be used to fund our extensive housing crisis.
The UK is also facing the burden of a prison crisis. Our prison system (specifically in England and Wales) is overcrowded, operating at roughly 98% to 99% capacity with an inmate population of approximately 87,342 (against a capacity of about 89,573). Emergency measures and early release schemes have been repeatedly deployed, but such schemes have previously shown very limited success. The only real fix is to invest in building more prisons or expand those already in place. I am sure the people of the UK would not mind if £13 billion were invested into that, rather than lining the pockets of some foreign government.
Or how about local government? Across the UK, many are facing severe financial strain, with some warning of effective bankruptcy or insolvency. Years of real-terms funding reductions combined with skyrocketing demand for statutory duties have pushed numerous town halls to the brink of collapse. Rising costs and demand for adult and children’s social care consume huge portions of the budget. Inflation, energy costs, and increases to the National Living Wage have rapidly inflated the day-to-day cost of running local services
The list continues: NHS, crime, transport, communities, education, potholes and infrastructure. How do government ministers have the balls to tell us every day that the economy is struggling, and that they are doing their best to help the British people, while they pour £13 billion down the drain? To make matters worse, many of the countries the aid goes to are among the highest in terms of corruption. We also send aid to China, which has the second strongest economy in the world. It is insulting that the government is willing to send a substantial sum of money overseas, while their own country falls apart in front of their eyes; billions of pounds which we cannot afford to just throw away. The UK is underfunded. We certainly have bigger issues to tackle domestically. We must help ourselves before we help others. Charity begins at home.
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Jack Watson is a 17 year-old student in Year 12 at Wyke College, Hull. You can read his Substack about following Hull City FC here. Follow him on X here.
(UKR)