Our shocking exclusive reveals huge £86bn of gross annual costs of immigration to the UK
Part II – Benefit payments, the cost of education, and the shocking final summary of all costs
Part I of this report began revealing the huge burdens placed on the people of the United Kingdom by the influx of so many people over recent years. In today’s second and final part, the costs we publish escalate still further and culminate in a shocking overall total.
Both parts of this ‘Costs of Immigration Special’ have been produced by Stand for Our Sovereignty (SOS), in collaboration with The Facts4EU think-tank and The Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIBUK).
In this second and final part we analyse two major, big ticket areas of expenditure: the rocketing benefits bill, and healthcare. We start with the smaller of these – the rapidly-growing size of the country’s benefits bill.
1. DWP – As much as £24 BILLION a year being spent on benefits due to immigration
Last year the DWP finally succumbed to pressure and provided data on Universal Credit categorised by a claimant’s immigration status. We now know that 15.2% of UC claimants (as of the latest monthly data, May 2026) are migrants of one type or another. Despite its previous denials we have even been able to source this information back to 2022, so it was being collected.
The DWP spent £310bn in the year to March 2026 on the vast array of payments of all kinds including Universal Credit and pensions. With a large number of variables involved for each one, which would mean higher or lower proportions for migrants being given to specific line items, we have applied the 15.2% figure across all payments but have excluded the very large sum for pensions.
This averaging is further justified by the substantial rises that have been taking place each month in the cost of benefits overall. Above we have only provided the numbers as at March of this year, which have now grown.
SUB-TOTAL FOR ANNUAL BENEFIT PAYMENTS: £23.9 BILLION P.A.
Lord (John) Redwood, former Secretary of State
commented exclusively to Stand for Our Sovereignty and Facts4EU
“Facts4EU are right to highlight the costs of the many migrants coming for low pay jobs or to live on benefits. At a time when many think the social security bill is rising far too quickly letting more people gain rights to benefits is a bad idea. If the government allowed fewer migrants in there would be fewer new people claiming additional benefits. This would be an easy way to help curb the big rise in benefit costs.
“At a time when NHS waiting lists are too high and a major government worry it makes no sense to invite more people in. When they need NHS treatment that adds to delays and places more strains on doctors and nurses. The government also needs to charge those who visit the UK just to get NHS services. These health tourists should reimburse the NHS as by law the NHS can make them pay.”
BEFORE WE CONTINUE…
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2. NHS – ‘Health tourism?’
Last year (2025) government-financed healthcare totalled £280.4 billion. Other providers including not-for-profits made up the balance to a total spend in the UK of £345.1 billion. In this analysis we only consider public spending.
There are no breakdowns by immigration status for patients treated by the health services of England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Whilst not provided this must be recorded because clearly there is no automatic entitlement simply because a patient presents in the UK for treatment.
In the chart below Facts4EU has made a conservative estimate of the cost, based on the non-UK-born population of the country (19% according to the ONS in Dec 2025). We have also estimated the separate cost of asylum-seekers / illegal migrants at a very conservative 50% of the average rate per person as determined by the NHS for the population as a whole.
Annual public spending on healthcare
Note: We have used only 50% of the average NHS cost per person for asylum-seekers / illegal migrants. It has been said that migrants are typically young men and therefore likely to use the NHS less. This ignores their mental health issues and the effects of subsequent ‘family re-unifications’ which involve typically older relatives. We therefore consider 50% of the average cost per person to be conservative.
Illegal migrants, and asylum-seekers who entered legally, are entitled to everything free – from GPs to free prescriptions to free GP registration to cataract operations and hip replacements. The fact they have never paid into the system does not count against them.
Those who entered legally on a visa are supposed to pay an Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS). which costs £1,035 per year, or £776 for students. The UK’s average health spending per head in 2025 was £4,036. So even those who pay the immigration surcharge are only paying a surcharge of 25.6% of the actual cost.
The justification from the predominantly left-wing think-tanks in the health arena is that visa-holders pay tax and N.I. like anyone else. The problem is that firstly this isn’t always the case (e.g. for students and those not working) and secondly visa-holders tend to be short-term and have not contributed via tax and N.I. over decades, in the same way as British people.
SUB-TOTAL FOR THE COST OF HEALTHCARE FOR MIGRANTS: £43.4 BILLION P.A.
Overall Summary – Parts I and II
In these two groundbreaking reports, Facts4EU and colleagues from Stand for Our Sovereignty and CIBUK have put some gross costs on the overall levels of mass immigration to which the UK has been subject over many years. The areas of spend which were able to be identified are not claimed to be exhaustive but even those which have been listed are shocking.
Below are the summary totals from the two reports.
The grand total of gross costs comes to a breathtaking £86 billion – for one year.
This is more than we spend on transport, roads, support for industries, defence, and many other areas.
Important: One of the reasons readers may find this total so shocking is because we have looked at costs for people not born in this country. Where government departments have been unable – or unwilling – to separate out the costs for migrants from their overall totals for each type of expenditure, we have derived the additional costs from the known percentage of non-UK-born people in the UK.
The number of people non-UK-born but who are nevertheless British is very small, and in any case is outweighed by the fact that some of our figures have had to come from data which is from last year, and the costs now are higher. In addition, most of the costs do NOT include the migrants’ share of capital expenditure, which is very significant in some cases.
Finally, and to labour the point, these two reports only consider gross costs and do NOT discuss any benefits which immigration may have brought to the country. Despite this, readers may feel that a gross total of £86 BILLION is an extraordinary amount to be paying each year to people not born in the United Kingdom.
Overall summary
Lord Redwood, former Secretary of State
with his final, exclusive comments to Stand for Our Sovereignty and Facts4EU
“Facts4EU have shown what many people have sensed: that inviting or accepting many low pay and no pay migrants into the UK places a big burden on public services and puts up public spending substantially. The Home Office and Justice system incur big costs policing borders and dealing with the criminal minority. The benefits system and NHS has to pay a lot to look after and support many of the new arrivals.”
“The figures do not include all the capital spend needed to provide the extra homes, hospitals, and other public facilities a large increase in population requires. The government would ease its bruising encounters with the bond market and its difficulty sticking to its borrowing limits if it stopped illegal migration and reduced low pay and no pay migration further.”
How we calculated the costs
Very broadly, the proportion of non-British people in the population now stands at 19%, according to the Office for National Statistics. Almost one in five people in the UK hail from other countries. They have arrived in the UK via a variety of means, legal and illegal, but whatever their route they consume public services which all have to be paid for.
These two reports look at the spending of some of the main government departments. In some cases these departments have started separating out costs by nationality or immigration status. In other cases there are line items in the reports and accounts showing the cost for a service which is clearly only provided for non-UK-born individuals, as for example in the Home Office costs for Asylum Support, Resettlement, and Accommodation.
Where government departments have done so, Facts4EU has used this information in the charts below. In other cases the departments can’t or won’t separate out costs. Facts4EU has therefore identified the proportion of the costs represented by foreign nationals. For example, we know the number of foreign nationals in our prisons and we know the average annual cost per prisoner. Multiplying these two items gives us the total cost per year for non-British prisoners.
Is our final total for the cost to the public purse represented by the immigrant population 100% accurate? Of course not. Is it a reasonable, indicative estimate based on as much official, detailed information as possible? Yes.
Observations
For many people, the concerns around mass immigration have more recently involved the increasing awareness of national security and personal safety risks. The latter have risen with the increasing reporting of criminal cases where the defendants are migrants.
In addition it is the government’s policy to curtail the use of hotels to house migrants and instead to disperse them in communities. This has of course entailed the reporting of the huge costs of hotel accommodation whilst at the same time alarming a great many people who are being affected.
These two reports comprising our ‘Costs of Immigration Special’ have gone much further than stories on specific newsworthy aspects of the debate.
No cost analysis of this whole subject can possibly be complete, nor can it be precise in every detail. The reason is simple: the government and all those in Whitehall have shown considerable reluctance to break down their published figures in relation to costs incurred as a result of immigration.
Where we have been forced to make reasonable assumptions, we have been careful to make these conservatively and we have explained how we arrived at the figures shown. No doubt our figures will be hotly contested by some. In the end, the overall total of £86 billion a year must be considered to be an estimate. It provides an indication that the overall costs of mass immigration over recent years go far beyond most people’s expectations.
We suggest it provides an interesting backdrop to a complex subject which has dominated the political and societal debate in our country – and which shows no signs of going away.
These two reports cost us a great deal of time, effort, expense, and lost income. Please, please help us to carry on our vital work in defence of independence, sovereignty, democracy and freedom by donating today to our research-engine: Facts4EU.Org or becoming a Member of Stand for Our Sovereignty. Thank you.
Please support our work
If more patriotic members of the public donate, we will keep going.
Please donate today to our research partner, Facts4eu, if you would like to continue reading us tomorrow, next week, and the weeks after.