Taxpayers at risk? Let’s talk about the £10 Billion Migrant cost claim

In March 2026, the UK Home Secretary announced that 350,000 “low‑skilled workers and their dependents” would cost taxpayers £10 billion over their lifetimes. She used this figure to justify making migrants wait longer before they can settle in the UK. This paper investigates where the £10 billion claim came from, how it was used in the speech, and what the wider evidence actually says about migrants’ financial contributions. The research finds that the £10 billion figure does not appear as a main finding in the reports it was said to come from. Instead, it is a combination of three specific groups that the reports show would have a negative impact. Those same reports also show that skilled workers would contribute £47 billion more than they cost—a fact the Home Secretary did not mention. The speech also left out another important context: the average UK‑born person also has a negative lifetime fiscal balance; most migrants are already paying taxes while being barred from receiving benefits; and the figures come with many uncertainties. The wider literature confirms that negative fiscal impacts are concentrated in particular subgroups, while most migrants make net positive contributions over their lifetimes. The paper argues that the £10 billion figure functions as a political artefact: its selective deployment constructs migrants as a fiscal burden, legitimising restrictive settlement policy while foreclosing honest public deliberation about trade‑offs, long‑term planning, and institutional credibility in migration governance. Keywords: migration policy, fiscal impact, settlement, quantification, political discourse, United Kingdom