Unemployed European Union migrants will no longer be able to claim housing benefit from April.
In the Daily Mail newspaper today, home secretary Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith, secretary of state for work and pensions, claimed the move would ensure migrants ‘are unable to take unfair advantage of our system’.
The policy is understood to apply only to recent arrivals who are claiming jobseeker’s allowance and will not affect those who have been previously working in the United Kingdom and have lost their job.
The measure is the latest move by the coalition government to restrict benefit for new migrants. At present, all new EU migrants have to wait three months to claim out-of-work benefits. Migrants from the EU will also be able to claim jobseeker’s allowance for just six months unless they have a genuine prospect of work.
On 1 January restrictions on the right of Bulgarians and Romanians to work across the EU were lifted.