Exportable Benefits

All we are asking for is consistency. The Government appear to be perfectly prepared to pay people who now live in the Minister's constituency, or people who live in my constituency in Kent, considerable sums of money, in the form of benefits decreed by the European Union—I have no problem with that. That money is paid to people who are not resident in the United Kingdom, people who have come here and paid no taxes, no rates, no nothing, for the majority of their working lives. They may be paying taxes now, but they have not paid them for 30, 40 or 50 years. Therefore, we cannot understand why United Kingdom citizens—UK passport-holders—who are now resident in European countries are being discriminated against, and those citizens cannot understand it themselves. That is the point. It has nothing to do with racism, extremism or anything else.