UK - Benefit tourism, another blow to British sovereignty

The tourism industry brings a lot of money into the country, but ‘benefit tourism’, where people from other countries come to the UK for benefits or free medical care, costs the UK vast amounts of money.

So you have to be careful which countries you set up reciprocal agreements with or you could lose out.

But now it transpires that the EU is setting up these agreements with other countries on behalf of every country in the EU.

The Telegraph and Express report that the EU is looking to set up these agreements initially with countries like Switzerland and Norway but that these will be followed by deals with Ukraine and north African countries.

The fear of course is that the UK will be flooded with people coming here to take advantage of a generous benefits system.

Talking to the Telegraph the employment minister, Chris Grayling, said that this was a ‘land grab’ by the EU and that “pre-emptive action to stop this” was required.

‘We are concerned about benefit tourism,’ he said ‘we want tighter rules. We want the rules changed and they are just not listening. This is something that is catching up with us very fast. I have decided that we have to take legal action over this because what’s happening step by step is we are being forced into a situation. We have got to go to the European Court and argue they don’t have the right to do this.’

This comes on the back of a recent threat of legal action against the UK from the EU for not paying some benefits to EU citizens who have not either worked or lived in the UK. This could cost £2.5 billion in welfare costs should the decision go against us.

But we all know that this is just posturing and that we will end up opening the doors up to all and sundry as dictated by the EU. If not this year then maybe next year or when a more pliant government is in place. Unless we do the right thing and withdraw permanently as soon as we can that is. And that will never happen if people insist on voting for the same three tired old parties, whose only aim is to hand the keys to the nation over to the EU.

Every day the need for a UK parliament with all its MPs and Lords reduces just a little bit more.

Jeff Taylor

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