Scrutable

This seems pretty extreme ever for the Tories. https://bsky.app/profile/bestforbritain ... egxisqqc22

Anyone know the detail behind the proposal? Are they really saying a family with a foreign spouse who’s been in the country 20+ years, where both are working, wouldn’t receive child benefit? No pension for either of the couple on retirement? Sounds pretty bonkers!

I can’t find any policy proposals that directly link to this. I wonder if it’s just how they’re presenting their other policies (marginally less extreme but still very sh.tty) to appeal to reform voters who won’t then actually follow up on the detail.

Anyone have any more background to it?

Ah, from a more clued up friend somewhere else:

What was trailed in the weekend papers was that the Tories want no non-British citizen to receive *disability* benefits, unless they have EU Settled Status. This'll be an amendment they try & fail to make to the UC & PIP Bill later this week.

Lots of foreign nationals, e.g. on work visas, are already unable to receive benefits - they have No Recourse to Public Funds. The Immigration White Paper would expand this, by extending the standard time to get Indefinite Leave to Remain (which gives you access to public funds) from 5yrs to 10, albeit with some exceptions.

So as I understand it (and I know the benefits system much more than the immigration system) this proposal would mostly hit people granted refugee status - who are for fairly obvious reasons quite likely to have health/disability issues - and non-British people with ILR.

Philp has then gone quite a way beyond that in that interview, either to fly a kite or because he's a moron.

If this affects non-British with ILR - then this could impact people who have been living and working here for decades. Paying tax and NI the whole time.

There are a few countries (e.g. Japan) that restrict their citizens from having another passport (dual nationality). So people from these places working here sometimes have opted to stick with ILR for decades rather than apply for British citizenship.

bob sterman wrote: Mon Jul 07, 2025 5:36 pm There are a few countries (e.g. Japan) that restrict their citizens from having another passport (dual nationality). So people from these places working here sometimes have opted to stick with ILR for decades rather than apply for British citizenship.

[rant]And within the EU, which we thought we were living in, there was no necessity to take the nationality of the country in the EU you just happened to be living in for now. And why should people, proud children of their native land, want to be British, this tin-pot banana republic that fate has, at least for now, established a life for them in? My wife is lucky, her native country allows dual nationals. But some, like the Netherlands, don't. But my wife is happy and proud being Czech, and being British would be purely transactional and she really doesn't want it. The only benefit, if benefit it is, is that she could vote in general elections. Unless some stupid government comes along and twists her arm.

And applying for British citizenship:
- It costs a lot of money
- You have to take exams
- You have to make an oath of allegiance to the monarch.

We native-born British are allowed to be republicans. We don't have to make oaths of allegiance. We can be unallegiant if we want to be. But the newly converted have to make an oath of allegiance. That was too much for Spike Milligan, who preferred to be Irish when he discovered that he had to actually apply to be British, even though he had lived in Britain ever since childhood and fought in the war.

And the British government has recently made border crossings rather annoying for dual nationals. Now utterly confused, you give the border guard both your passports, as in theory you always ought to have done, just to make sure, and you find out they really don't want to know about it, as that's too complicated. Yet a large proportion of this country is dual national, especially after Brexit encouraged lots of people with potential other nationalities to assert them to keep that EU right.

So I don't see my wife ever wanting to apply to be British, even though she speaks English well enough to be a school teacher. Even though her native country is reasonably OK with dual nationals: my daughter is a dual national, and is finding border crossings rather confusing now. She has to carry two passports and show one to some people and another to some other people. And sometimes he has to book a return as two singles so she can register a different travel document for the two journeys.

Maybe we will go and live in my wife's country when we are old(er). But I doubt shall ever be able to speak Czech well enough to pass their exam and become Czech.[/rant]