The question is, £5bn to whose pocket? If they stimulate all sectors of the economy, fair enough. If it's mostly just the 1%-ers getting cheaper maids, feck it.

And in any case, £5bn? Over a year, for the UK economy? Drop in the ocean.

Don't mind EU workers coming here. I just don't think they should be allowed benifits (of any sort) until they've paid some national insurance here.

There's an agreement (can't remember the name) which basically stipulates all EU citizens have rights to benefits in all EU countries. Personally, I think that does encourage 'benefits tourism' and could be modified a bit. But binning it in general is just a recipe for an immense bunfight in terms of who pays for what that would take decades to resolve.

Benefits tourism? There are EU countries with much better benefits systems than the UK.

then i do hope that they go there instead of here but sadly that does not seem to be the case
we are leaving the EU. its not a matter of how its just a matter of when
as it has now got to the stage of not how much it costs leaving but can we afford to stay ...

Do you think countries like Germany or France don't have the same problems with immigrants? Germany is right on their borders and has a good benefits system and they can drive home at the weekend...

I was reading something about Germany's situation with similar issues recently. They are starting to have some of the same social issues - alienation, ghettoisation etc - that the UK is starting to see but it's still much lower key than here. The difference I suspect is mostly one of perception but there is also the issue of overall population size. Germany, being a bigger country with more people in it, can absorb a greater number of migrants before it becomes 'noticeable' to the local population. Essentially it's the ratio of migrants to locals that is the issue, not the absolute number of migrants.

As to whether the German system is better than the UK system I wouldn't claim to be intimately familiar with either but the piece I read did say there was some political movement in Germany towards making their system more restrictive/less generous.

Jon

You mean people like me and all my twenty something European colleagues who staff the high end engineering companies because there is just not enough British engineers being trained up**?

** or they all go into banking that pays 10 times more

More than 50% of my staff are European.

Great work ethic and a real benefit to the company

Shush now. Newspapers don't want to hear about those sort of migrants - they don't make good copy

Bloody immigrants coming over here and working hard and paying into the country!