If you wanted to engineer a headline guaranteed to inflame people, combining polygamy (which, let’s face it, is meant to imply Muslims) and benefits would be a perfect way to do it.
So let’s take a look at both the misleading headline and the underlying context of this Express article
The insinuation here is that Starmer is somehow embracing polygamy to appease Muslims, and so he decided in April to increase their benefits specifically.
I hope that most readers of this substack will be raising a very cynical eyebrow at this point!
So let’s look at the facts around both polygamous marriage and how it impacts benefits claims, objectively.
Polygamous marriage is not something you can enter into legally in the UK.
However, people can have entered into a polygamous marriage while all parties were living in a country where that is legal, and for that marriage to be recognised in the UK, under certain, very limited circumstances.
This recognition in UK law of polygamous marriages that have taken place elsewhere dates back to at least 1971.
This is nothing new.
In 2008, it was explained in parliamentary questions:
For a polygamous marriage to be considered valid in the UK, the parties must be domiciled in a country where polygamous marriage is permitted, and must have entered into the marriage in that country. Provided the parties follow the necessary requirements under the law of the country in question, the marriage would be recognised in England and Wales. The law is drafted thus because the Government have no desire forcibly to sever relationships that have been lawfully contracted in other jurisdictions. This should not, however, be construed as government approval of polygamous marriage. The Government do not support polygamous marriage and support the law that prohibits parties from contracting polygamous marriages in this jurisdiction.
The Immigration Act 1988 prohibited anyone from sponsoring a non-British/Irish national for permission to enter or remain in the UK as their spouse if they already had a spouse living here and the marriage was ongoing.
Nor are any children of subsequent wives allowed to come here as dependents.
So for 35 years, no man has been able to bring multiple wives to live in the UK, contrary to popular belief on social media!
A second or subsequent wife can apply to move to the UK legally in her own right with a work or study visa, and then join her husband’s household here. But this is rare (as we’ll see shortly)
It is worth reiterating here that no new immigrants to the UK are entitled to benefits.
However, once they have lived here for a number of years (can be 10+), working and supporting themselves and their family, while paying NHS surcharges (typically £1035 per person per year), and any visa fees, they can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain, and then potentially for British citizenship (both costing many £1000s).
At that point, they may become entitled to some benefits.
Certain means-tested benefits recognise polygamous marriages, including housing benefit and pension credit, while others, particularly Universal Credit, do not.
For those that do, the man and his first wife are treated as a couple, and any subsequent wife is entitled to a further payment in recognition of the fact that a three-person household has higher costs than a two-person one.
However, since the 1988 Immigration Act, it has been agreed that people should NOT be able to benefit financially from being in a polygamous marriage, so the “extra” payment for the second wife is less than if she claimed as a single person. The value is halfway between the payment to a couple and that of a single person.
So in the case of pension credits:
A couple gets £363.25 per week
A single person gets £238
A second wife in a polygamous family gets £125.25
In April, pension credits went up by 4.8% for ALL CLAIMANTS.
And polygamous households were not excluded from that rise.
And that’s what gave the Express their exclusive ‘story’.
A handful of pensioner couples whose marriage status has been legally recognised in the UK for over 35 years, who are actually worse off than if they were not in a polygamous marriage, had their benefits increased at the same rate as everyone else…
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.