DWP shutdown Whateley’s ‘polygamous marriages are stealing benefits’ dogwhistle

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has debunked the right-wing dog whistle suggesting Muslims are claiming benefits for households where a man has multiple wives. Racist British media are beating the same drum to whip-up hatred against Muslims again…

GB News, of course, led the charge, running with the headline “DWP increases benefits paid to husbands with two or more wives.” The rag continued:

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has increased the weekly allowance paid to additional spouses in recognised overseas polygamous marriages as part of this year’s benefits uprating.

From April 2026, each additional spouse in an eligible household now receives £125.25 per week, a 4.8 per cent rise from the previous £119.50 rate.

The uplift adds £5.75 a week, or roughly £299 a year, and mirrors wage growth, which is used to calculate annual Pension Credit increases.

GB News swings at the same racist piñata

While they made it sound like Muslim men are getting special treatment, they’re actually describing increases which anyone on benefits got. The uplift, which happens every April, is just to bring benefits in line with inflation.

So it’s far more likely that your nan, struggling neighbour, and the couple you know who are struggling to make ends meet are getting more money from the taxpayer. As they all should.

GB News was careful not to explicitly blame Muslims, however, they clearly are the target because we don’t have polygamous marriages in the UK. But their target audience are people who think refugees and immigrants come here to live cushy lives and get thousands in benefits. This is despite all the research showing just how much people on Universal Credit struggle to survive.

However, that didn’t stop the Tories’ resident ‘poor people hater’, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Helen Whately. She continued drumming up hatred. On Instagram Whately said:

Polygamy is illegal here in the UK, but if you’ve married four wives overseas and then moved here you could be claiming up to £78,000 in benefits a year, paid for by the British taxpayer. That is absurd and totally wrong.

She’s correct on one thing, that is ‘absurd and totally wrong’, because it doesn’t happen.

As Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu has pointed out:

In the UK a second, third or fourth wife can’t get a spouse visa if there’s already a legal wife living in the UK. So then how is she going to obtain any welfare benefits as a wife if she can’t get a spouse visa?

The actual number is less than ten.

Mos-Shogbamimu also correctly explained that the tories are vowing to change this if they get into power, but they were already in power for 14 years and didn’t change it. That’s probably because it didn’t happen.

However, as always with right-wing gammons, their argument falls down when they try to prove it.

DWP agrees, the problem doesn’t exist

Tory MP Matt Vickers submitted a series of written questions to the DWP. In them he requested to know more about how many people are claiming benefits in politics. He also wanted to know what the DWP are gonna do about it. The answer is absolutely nothing, because the problem doesn’t exist.

Stephen Timms replied to all of the questions with the same answer:

Polygamous marriages are illegal in the UK. Immigration rules have generally prevented the formation of polygamous households in this country since 1988. Under successive governments access to benefit support for additional spouses is only available where the marriage took place in a country where the practice is legal. The Department does not hold information in respect of Pension Credit.

Timms continued:

However, the most recent published data (August 2025) from the Housing Benefit Single Housing Extract (SHBE) indicates that there are fewer than ten households where claimants are recorded as being in a polygamous marriage formed in another country. In these exceptional cases, there is no financial benefit as more would be paid in benefits if the additional person claimed as a single person. There are no plans to change the existing benefit rules.

Say it louder for those at the back — there are less than 10 claimants who are in a polygamous marriage. This just shows how much the right wing losers are engineering panic about immigration when it’s all absolute lies. The tories know that the quickest way to bring back the gammons from Reform is to be racist.

But like most Tory policies, all they really want to ensure is that the working class attack each other so we don’t look up.

Featured image via the Canary