Rupert Lowe was put back in his box by Labour MP Andrew Western after spouting unfounded claims about Universal Credit payments to foreign nationals.
In recent months, the Great Yarmouth MP has tried to park his tanks on Reform UK’s lawn by setting up his own party, Restore UK, which seems determined to outflank Nigel Farage’s party on anti-migrant rhetoric.
The polls suggest Restore could be pulling some support away from Reform, no doubt attracting some voters who just don’t think Reform are extreme enough for them.
Lowe’s latest example of inflammatory anti-migrant comments came on Monday, when he put a question to ministers from the Department of Work and Pensions.
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The MP claimed £10.1bn of Universal Credit payments in 2024 was “gifted to foreign nationals.”
He then asked whether the solution to this was to “ban all foreigners from claiming any benefits, remove from our country migrants incapable of financially supporting themselves and hand that money back to taxpaying British men and women.”
It was at this point that Andrew Western, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transformation, stood up to deliver the perfect response to Lowe’s comments, fact-checking him on his figures and calling out his divisive rhetoric.
After saying he “fundamentally disagrees” with Lowe’s point of view on migrants, the Labour MP said: “The figure that he uses is a complete conflation, a significant overestimation and shows his ignorance if he does not understand that it is impossible to suggest that that money has all been paid directly to foreign nationals.
“The figure that he uses is drawn from the total number of households with a foreign national in and many of the individual claimants could in fact be British or Irish citizens,” Western explained.