Migration och välfärd

Är migrationen från EUs fattigare länder till de mer välbeställda välfärdsstaterna ett hot ? Det är en debatt i flera EU-länder, inte minst i Storbritannien.

I dagens The Times går socialförsäkringsministern (och tidigare torypartiledaren) Iain Duncan Smith till motangrepp mot sina många kritiker. Hans  omfattande omläggning av de brittiska bidragssystemen är högst kontroversiell även inom det egna partiet. Nu använder han den heta debatten om migrationen som argument för den omläggning som bär hans signatur.

Bidragssystemet var tidigare för slappt, menar han. Det gamla systemet har inneburit att  antalet hushåll där ingen någonsin haft ett jobb har fördubblats. Det har stimulerat invandringen. Det som krävs, menar han, är en ordning som gör att brittiska medborgare tar jobb. Bara så kan ”landets gränser säkras”, säger han enligt tidningen och påpekar detta:”welfare payments rose by twice as much as average earnings.”

“More than half of the rise in employment that we saw was accounted for by foreign nationals,” he says. “And not just in London — three quarters of eastern European migrants in employment live outside London.

“Immigration into the UK has been a supply and demand issue. Businesses needed the labour, and because of the way that our benefit system was constructed, too few of the economically inactive took the jobs on offer.”

He argues that his reforms, which have included a cap on the benefits that households can claim and cuts to the increases in welfare payments, have had an effect in reducing immigration.

“Over the last year, three quarters of the surge in employment has been made up of UK nationals,” he says. “When we took office, there were nearly five million people on out-of-work benefits. It was clear to me that in large part this situation was the product of a dysfunctional welfare system that often trapped those it was supposed to help in cycles of worklessness and dependency.”

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4172516.ece