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UK: Residence test attacked

01 March 1996

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The habitual residence test introduced in 1994 to clamp down on so-called 'benefit tourists' has left penniless people who by no stretch of the imagination are benefit tourists, and has proved expensive, unfair and unworkable, according to a hard-hitting report by the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux (NACAB). The government expected fewer than 6,000 people to fall foul of the regulations each year, but almost 28,000 people, a fifth of them British, have been denied benefit in the first 18 months. The rule has had a disproportionate effect on black and Asian Britons who spend time overseas caring for elderly relatives. People held to be not 'habitually resident' include a British man of Pakistani origin who fought in the British army in the Second World War and had worked in the Yorkshire woollen mills for 31 years. Failing the test, NACAB, London N1 9LZ.

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