“Can anyone see how the Mail came to the £886b (I think you mean £886m) from this?”
Unsurprisingly, you have to dig deep. The footnotes on p31 of the report refer to “Benefit Claims by EEA Nationals’, DWP Statistical Release (November 2015), which is this:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/502129/benefit-expenditure-eea-nationals-ad-hoc-stats.pdf
Page 5 of that document shows a line “DWP out-of-work expenditure-EEA led claims” which is quoted at £886m. I think the Mail article said “buried in a government report” – and they are right.
This is just a small part of the vast wealth transfer scheme that is the EU. This sum of taxpayer’s dosh is that handed foreigners in the form of “out-of-work” benefits. It can be near enough doubled (from the same report) when one includes Housing Benefit for those in work. However, it does not include Tax Credits (which are administered by HMRC. The figures provided seem to be from the DWP). I cannot readily find the figures for Tax Credit payments to EEA nationals but of one thing you can be sure: the £1.6bn payments for Housing Benefit and so-called Job Seeker’s allowance can be at least trebled when the Tax credit payments to foreign nationals are included. Tax Credits currently cost the country over £30bn. Even if only 10% of this sum is handed to foreigners (and the government’s own figures – from the same report - show that 16% of Housing Benefit is paid to EEA nationals in work) then another £3bn can be added to the cost.