by political editor Paul Francis

Ministers have vowed to ‘sort out’ the benefits system after figures showed 370,000 migrants in the UK were claiming jobless benefits.

Ashford MP and immigration minister Damian Green said Labour had left the government an organisational mess it was determined to tackle.

The figures have led some to claim that they bear out concerns over benefit tourism.

An analysis by the government showed there were 371,000 foreign-born claimants for benefits out of 5.5m recipients in total. Of these, 285,000 were from outside the European Economic Area.

More than half were now British citizens and most others had grounds to be receiving unemployment, housing and incapacity benefits under current rules.

Mr Green said: "There’s a natural instinct that says that no one from other countries should receive benefits at all. But if someone works and pays taxes here, it’s not unreasonable that we should help out if they fall on hard times.

"But we have to have a system that is fair and transparent, and which stops people receiving money that they should not be entitled to."

A further more detailed analysis of 9,000 claimants found that most of those were entitled to what they were getting, but the records of a quarter of them could not be verified.

In an article for the Daily Telegraph, Mr Green said: "There may be a good reason for the fact that we can’t identify the rest – there may be data errors in our different databases, like the spelling of a foreign surname.

"But equally, they may be an indication of a major failure in our benefits system left behind for us by the last government."

He added: "Either way, we will find out. We’ll be investigating the records of all of those people claiming benefits to make sure they are entitled to what they are receiving.

"We’ve already identified some with serious question marks over both their right to benefits and their immigration status."