Is there anything about the UK's willingness to give anyone benefits that will ever surprise me?

From The Telegraph:

'The key suspect in the murder of WPc Yvonne Fletcher was claiming taxpayer-funded benefits at the time the policewoman was shot dead, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Matouk Mohammed Matouk, who is at the centre of an extradition row between Britain and Libya, took advantage of this country’s generous social security rules during two years as a student here.

The payments are disclosed in a cache of documents found by this newspaper in the wreckage of Mr Matouk’s home outside Tripoli.

The papers show that he applied for child benefit for his two daughters, Buthina and Bushra, after enrolling in an architecture course at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University in 1982.

A letter from the then Department of Health and Social Security, written in June 1983, confirmed that Mr Matouk and his wife, Salma Salem, qualified for child benefit.

The couple were entitled to keep claiming the payments, which were backdated seven months from the date of the letter, until Mr Matouk was deported following WPc Fletcher’s murder in April 1984.

In total, the couple were entitled to more than £800 of child benefit — the equivalent of £2,000 today. The letter states that “child benefit is payable for Buthina and Bushra at the weekly rate of £5.85 each from and including 6/12/82”.

It has also emerged that Mr Matouk was allowed to graduate in absentia from Heriot-Watt in July 1986, more than two years after he had been thrown out of the country over his suspected involvement in WPc Fletcher’s death. '

So a foreign student comes to the UK from Libya, claims benefits for his children, works in the Libyan embassy, is accused of murdering a British Policewoman, leaves the UK using diplomatic immunity to avoid arrest and gets a degree in-absentia.

I asked, 'Is there anything about the UK's willingness to give anyone benefits that will ever surprise me?' The answer is probably not.