Hiya Pete
How's about "incompetence"? DWP decision makers don't always get the 5 year rule right, and are singularly hopeless at (especially) Maltese and Cypriot claimants who have lived in the UK since long before Malta and Cyprus joined the EU. It's as if they see "EU national" and forget all about domestic immigration law rights.
Some of your bods may well have previously claimed benefits before the 2004 changes - see the line of discussion about whether you can be a jobseeker and claim IS on the IS/JSA thread.
However it is true that the conventional view is that EU nationals have the right to claim JSA only, unless they are in some category of "qualified person" such as a part-time or temporarily incapable worker or resident over 5 years, in which case IB becomes feasible. If they just leave the job market, which is what most lone parents do, they don't fit into any category of qualified person. Subject, of course, to the ever-decreasing authority of Baumbast, which is getting itself "distinguished on the facts" left right and centre.
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