£23bn in benefits for foreign nationals: what is inside the estimate?

What is in the £23 billion?

The total brings together three kinds of spending. These are the rounded amounts in CSJ’s current announcement and report, not a new estimate calculated by TALLYCAT01.

Support for children includes Child Benefit, free school meals and government-funded childcare. It is not all cash handed directly to adults. Pension-related payments include the State Pension and other support for older people.

The label working-age benefits does not mean every recipient is out of work. These benefits can support people with jobs, illness or disabilities, and families. CSJ discloses these categories; they are not hidden additions we discovered.

Sources: Centre for Social JusticeCentre for Social JusticeDepartment for Work and Pensions response, hosted by Centre for Migration Control

How did the researchers reach the total?

There is no single government table that directly measures every part of this total by nationality. CSJ combined administrative records with survey-based estimates, population estimates and average payment amounts.

For example, DWP says nationality is not recorded as part of the State Pension claim process. The published Child Benefit nationality breakdown was also discontinued. Those gaps help explain why a model is needed.

Using a model is not itself an error. The question is whether its inputs and adjustments produce a reliable estimate. We found the public methods, but not a complete workbook, code, input table or sensitivity results that would let us independently reconstruct £23 billion.

Sources: Centre for Social JusticeCentre for Social JusticeUK Parliament, answer by Torsten BellUK Parliament, answer by Darren Jones

Why household payments need care

Universal Credit is paid to households. In a couple, one payment can support two adults and their children. Calling the whole payment spending on a foreign individual can therefore be misleading unless the household definition is explained.

The recovered DWP response reports £11.920 billion for calendar 2025 in Great Britain. It counts the full qualifying household award when at least one claimant is neither British nor Irish and the partner is eligible. Some of these households can include a British partner.

That total rounds to £11.9 billion, the Universal Credit amount in CSJ’s announcement. But the report also says estimated expenditure is halved for mixed households. We need the intermediate calculations to see how those statements fit together.

This is an unresolved question, not proof that CSJ ignored British partners or inflated the final total. The next useful step is to inspect its workings.

Sources: Department for Work and Pensions response, hosted by Centre for Migration ControlCentre for Social JusticeCentre for Social Justice

Why £23 billion is not the overall cost of immigration

A spending figure shows money going out. It does not show taxes coming in, all the other public services used, or how the economy would differ without immigration.

To calculate an overall balance, we would need a consistent group of people, period and method on both sides of the calculation. We have not substituted a tax figure from a different population or year.

The CSJ announcement does not describe £23 billion as a net fiscal loss. This distinction explains what the estimate can tell us; it is not a correction of words the announcement did not use.

Sources: Centre for Social JusticeCentre for Social Justice

The people count answers a different question

CSJ also estimates about 1.85 million non-British adults receiving at least one included benefit or pension in 2025, after allowing for people receiving more than one payment.

That adult count excludes people receiving only the specified child-related support, while the £23 billion includes spending on that support. The two totals therefore do not cover exactly the same things.

Dividing £23 billion by 1.85 million would not give an observed average payment to each counted adult. The model’s detailed overlap and receipt-rate calculations are also needed to check the headcount properly.

Sources: Centre for Social JusticeCentre for Social Justice

What we still need to know

Checked: what the headline includes, the sum of its rounded components and what the main Universal Credit source counts.

Still unclear: the complete calculation behind £23 billion, including mixed-household adjustments, population and geography matching, survey inputs and uncertainty.

Next update: if the missing workings become available, we can test the model rather than only explain it. We have prepared a clarification enquiry, but it has not been sent. We do not claim that a reply is due or that an update date has been arranged.

Sources: Centre for Social JusticeCentre for Social JusticeDepartment for Work and Pensions response, hosted by Centre for Migration Control

The story, in order

Sources you can check

• Almost two million foreign nationals receiving benefits or State PensionCentre for Social Justice / 14 October 2026Original announcement and its Notes to editors; source of the claim, not an independent validation
• State of DependencyCentre for Social Justice / 13 October 2026Original report; methods on printed page 189 and Figure 5.28 on printed page 190
• DWP FOI2026/83815, reproduced in a Centre for Migration Control briefingDepartment for Work and Pensions response, hosted by Centre for Migration Control / 17 September 2026Underlying Universal Credit administrative response; the DWP material is PDF pages 6 to 12, following five pages of CMC commentary
• Universal Credit statistics: background information and methodologyDepartment for Work and PensionsOfficial definitions for claimant nationality, immigration status and monthly snapshots
• Family Resources Survey: financial year 2024 to 2025Department for Work and Pensions / 26 March 2026Official survey release and methodological context; not proof of the exact survey vintage used in CSJ calculations
• State Retirement Pensions: Foreign Nationals, written question 108263UK Parliament, answer by Torsten Bell / 3 February 2026Official explanation that nationality is not recorded in the State Pension claim process
• Child Benefit: Foreign Nationals, written question 47010UK Parliament, answer by Darren Jones / 30 April 2025Official explanation that the Child Benefit nationality breakdown was discontinued
• Migrant Journey: user guideHome OfficeSection 3.4 describes limits on using immigration-route records to establish current residence

We recovered the complete current CSJ report, announcement and the 12-page CMC briefing containing the DWP response. We checked the decisive pages, compared preserved report versions, reproduced the displayed arithmetic and reviewed relevant official methods. Full model validation remains on hold pending the missing workings. The narrower explanation here does not depend on proving the estimate wrong.