Posted on 02/03/2008 12:30:38 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Husbands living in a "harem" with multiple wives have been cleared to claim state benefits for all their different partners.
A Muslim man with four spouses - which is permitted under Islamic law - could receive £10,000 a year in income support alone.
He could also be entitled to more generous housing and council tax benefit, to reflect the fact his household needs a bigger property.
Ministers have decided that, even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, polygamous marriages can be recognised formally by the state - provided they took place overseas, in countries where they are legal.
The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife.
Ministers estimate that up to a thousand polygamous partnerships exist in Britain, although they admit there is no exact record.
Potentially, the benefits bill for income support could reach £10m.
New guidelines on income support from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) state: "Where there is a valid polygamous marriage the claimant and one spouse will be paid the couple rate (£92.80).
"The amount payable for each additional spouse is presently £33.65."
Income support for all of the wives may be paid directly into the husband's bank account, if the family so choose.
Chris Grayling, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said that the decision was "completely unjustifiable".
He added: "You are not allowed to have multiple marriages in the UK, so to have a situation where the benefits system is treating people in different ways is totally unacceptable and will serve to undermine confidence in the system.
"This sets a precedent that will lead to more demands for the culture of other countries to be reflected in UK law and the benefits system."
Mr Grayling also accused the Government of trying to keep the ruling quiet because the topic is so controversial.
Corin Taylor, research director for the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "British taxpayers are paying a record amount of tax so the Government has a duty to make sure that every penny is spent properly.
"Polygamy is not something which British law allows and therefore British taxpayers should not have to pay for extra benefits for second or third wives.
"If other countries sanction polygamy that is fine but the British taxpayer should not have to fund it."
Ministers launched a review of the benefit rules for polygamous marriages in November 2006, after it emerged that some families had benefited financially.
The review concluded in December last year with agreement that the extra benefits should continue to be paid. But the decision was not publicly announced.
Four departments - the Treasury, the DWP, HM Revenue and Customs, and the Home Office - were involved in the review, which concluded that recognising multiple marriages conducted overseas was 'the best possible' option. In Britain, bigamy is punishable by up to seven years in prison.
Islamic law permits men to have up to four wives at any one time - known as a harem - provided the husband spends equal amounts of time and money on each of them.
The DWP believes the number of people in polygamous marriages entering Britain has fallen since the 1988 Immigration Act, which makes it harder to bring more than one wife to the UK.
But, while a married man cannot obtain a spouse visa to bring a second wife into Britain, some multiple partners may be able to enter the country via other legal routes such as tourist visas, student visas or work permits.
Officials have also identified a potential loophole by which a man can divorce his wife under British law while continuing to live with her as his spouse under Islamic law, and obtain a spouse visa for a foreign woman who he can legally marry.
Immigration rules say entry clearance may not be withheld from a second wife where the husband has divorced his previous wife, and the divorce is thought to be one of convenience.
This is so, even if the husband is still living with the previous wife and to issue the entry clearance would lead to the formation of a polygamous household.
Muslim couples are only married in the eyes of the British state if they undergo a register office wedding as well as a Nikah, or religious ceremony.
Muslim groups say it is quite common for men here to undergo more than one Nikah with different wives. This does not count as bigamy since only the first marriage is legally recognised.
A DWP spokesman said: 'There are fewer than 1,000 polygamous marriages in the UK and only a small percentage of these are claiming social security benefit.
"We recently reviewed the rules regarding benefit payments to customers in a polygamous marriage, which conclude that the rules in place since 1987 provide the necessary safeguards to ensure there is no financial advantage for claimants in a valid polygamous marriage."
Infidel ping.
Sounds like a plan. The U.S. sounds like a good place to start a Constitutional Republic. Let me know if there is a growing interest. I have a few ideas myself that I think might work.
Ah, Great Britainites, how do you like that Muslim a$$? Yummy, is it? Better than trifle? Odiferous, but scrumptuously picante? Enjoy it now, because it’s going to be hard to savor anything minus a head!
Ping!
Well, I would question a UKTV survey. One UKTV channel was recently rebranded simply as ‘Dave TV’. The watching demographic will hardly be representative of the UK population.
As for ‘Whingeing Poms’: Isn’t it a bit hypocritical (and ironic) that Aussies are always whingeing about them? Just a thought. Also, why is Australia trying to attract more and more whingeing Poms to its shores if they are so much trouble? Recent cricket scandals seem to suggest that Aussies are the last to talk about whinging. :-)
And you gave the world ‘Neighbours!’ Hang your head in shame man! ;-)
No, it's not hypocritical at all. It's an historical matter. Australia was settled by convicts from Britain and people who worked very hard to establish a life in this country. Their spirit was still very much alive a few generations later when we arrived as migrants in 1949. In the fifties when the english migrants began to arrive, being 'on the dole' was out of the question for an able-bodied Australian. The population was just on 7 million at the time.
The europeans were housed in migrant camps and shortly after arrival, more often than not within a matter of weeks, fanned out across the country to take up their two year work contracts for the government. They assimilated quickly.
I am not sure why so many Brits remained in the camps for several years, but they did. Perhaps being British they were not required to sign a government contract. It was from these camps the early complaints originated. The culture of 'the government should provide' showed itself in complaints about the living conditions, the amount of welfare received, and of course, the complete lack of government housing.
Government Housing? There never was any. Whatever gave the Brits that idea? The europeans, in the small town where we ended up, built themselves shacks out of scrap timber and waterproof packaging. Our family were lucky enough to find a small house to rent without plumbing that cost half of our weekly income...my father, a professional, dug irrigation ditches for eight years!
The 'whinging poms' earned their name because their expectations were not met. Perhaps they simply came because they were sick of english weather? I've often thought they 'whinged' because they did have something to go back to. Most european migrants didn't.
Britain is still a good nation. The British are still a good people.
It is the PC idiots who run the country that are ruining a great nation.
But I cannot ‘defend’ Britain over this. Just insanely stupid.
All I can say to my American friends here is that there has been a huge backlash here since the story broke, with conservatives and liberals angry at this decision. Perhaps coming from different angles, but together hopefully the press coverage and backlash will force a change.
He could also be entitled to more generous housing and council tax benefit, to reflect the fact his household needs a bigger property.
A jizya tax under any name would pay no different, still the same.
My apologizes to the Bard
Sick! Sick! Sick!
The U.S.A. has a little housecleaning to do, too.
Florida City Makes Gender 'Optional'
Gore Claims Scriptural Mandate On Environmental Issues
Bill Would Make It Illegal To Serve Fat People
yitbos
Thanks for the reply. Your family history sounds fascinating and I have always wanted to visit Australia (relatives who have travelled there loved it).
You raised some very interesting points about Brit emigration in the 1950s. Would you agree though that part of the Aussie ‘Pom-bashing’ culture originated from Australia’s own desire for a national identity? By that, I mean that the Aussie Pom-bashing originated from a desire to grow away from the Empire and an indentity of a British possession to a true sense of nationhood.
No connection IMO. Australians, during that period, were overwhelmingly pro-Britain, they referred to England as the 'home country' and when Queen Elizabeth visited in the early fifties, they went nuts!
Australian attitutes toward England did not begin to cool until England joined the common market - in 1973 IIRC. Australia then had to market the products of its agriculture throughout the pacific rim, and we began to hear the rhetoric 'Australia is part of Asia'
It was as if 'Mother England' had abandoned her 'children' - suddenly, we needed to find outlets for all that butter, lamb and beef that once automatically went to feed the British. It came as a shock.
It wasn't just the Australians who used the term 'whinging pom' - the endless complaints that emanated from a large number of british migrants were also noticably derided by the rest of the migrant community. Greeks, Italians, Maltese, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles etc, they all noticed the culture of complaint and attitutes of entitlement the 'poms' brought with them.
I have not researched what might have been the reasons for this, but suspect a culture of 'welfare' dependence - that is anything BUT welfare, in fact.
Why do they even let polygamists into the country? Isn’t there some sort of bar that would prevent polygamists from even being considered for citizenship?
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