BARONESS FLATHER: Polygamy, welfare benefits and an insidious silence
By BARONESS FLATHER
Last updated at 1:08 PM on 16th September 2011
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In this disturbing and brave exposé, a Pakistan-born baroness reveals how some of her countrymen have as many children as possible by several wives so as to milk our welfare system...
Baroness Shreela Flather, Mayor of Windsor and Maidenhead, was the first Asian woman member of the House of Lords
Behind the creation of the modern welfare state lay a noble ideal. The post-war generation of politicians and civil servants were motivated by the desire to protect the vulnerable, the sick and those in genuine poverty.
Tragically, over recent decades, the system has become corrupted. It might have once been a safety net for those in real difficulties but, today, parts of the benefits structure have become a lucrative racket for claimants who lack any sense of social responsibility.
Through its generosity, which now costs taxpayers more than £200 billion a year, Britain’s social security system incentivises idleness and fecklessness.
And one of the most worrying aspects of this — and which is something that has been a taboo subject for far too long, because of sensitivities about the issue of race — is the way the system is exploited by some migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
As I said in Parliament this week, there is now a growing wealth of evidence that the generosity of the welfare state encourages some Muslims from these two regions — along with plenty of white families — to produce ever larger families in order to claim extra payments and publicly-subsidised housing. And it’s something the system seems to allow too easily.
For example, a Pakistani man contracts a marriage in his native country, and then brings his wife to England to start a family. Because they have been married only under Islamic law, she isn’t legally registered by British authorities as his wife. Even so, they are able to claim child benefit for any children they have.
But the state handouts do not end there, for under Islamic Sharia law, polygamy is permissible. So a man can return to Pakistan, take another bride and then, in a repetition of the process, bring her to England where they also have children together — obtaining yet more money from the state.
Because such Islamic multiple-marriages are not recognised in Britain, the women are regarded by the welfare system as single mothers — and are therefore entitled to the full range of lone-parent payments.
Eastern values fashion and cultures meet western on the high streets of the multicultural society of Birmingham
As a result, several ‘families’, fathered by the same Pakistani man, can all claim benefits as they are provided for by the welfare state, which treats them as if they are not related.
Figures are hard to obtain, but it’s thought there may be around 1,000 polygamous families living in the UK, costing taxpayers millions of pounds every year. A friend of mine, who investigated the issue for a BBC Panorama programme, told me of one street in a Yorkshire town where all the residents are Pakistani women with children living on social security. There is not one man living in the street.
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2037998/UK-immigration-Polygamy-welfare-benefits-insidious-silence.html#ixzz1nEhOGrx6
Topic: Islam and Social Security