Benefits claimants snub discounted tickets to Britain's beloved tourist attractions

Benefits claimants are snubbing tickets to some of Britain's favourite tourist attractions.

Publicly-backed institutions like the Tower of London, Kew Gardens and Tate galleries offer up heavily-discounted tickets for those on benefits.

Within the last year alone, millions of pounds has been offered up in savings, GB News analysis has found.

Historic Royal Palaces, which runs six iconic British locations, offers tickets of just £1 to those who claim a range of benefits.

Its locations including the Tower of London and Kensington Palace sold 227,094 discounted tickets from April 2025 to March 2026.

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London Zoo has hailed its own scheme - it told The Telegraph how it has "opened the door for thousands of people who might otherwise be excluded".

Alongside Historic Royal Palaces' 227,094 tickets, several of Britain's top attractions have offered up discounted entry.

Kew Gardens gave out 72,091 tickets last year.

The Tate galleries, meanwhile, issued 10,366 to its exhibitions and events.

The Natural History Musem, the UK's favourite place to visit, gave out 1,886 to its paid exhibits - and the British Museum 544.

But with 24.3 million people claiming some combination of DWP handouts last year, questions have been raised over why those numbers are so low.

Of the tickets the attractions did, in fact, sell, critics said the millions of pounds in savings for benefits claimants were evidence of "two-tier Britain".

William Yarwood, campaigns director at the Taxpayers' Alliance, told GB News: "Taxpayers will rightly question why people funding the welfare system are expected to pay full price while benefit claimants receive heavily discounted tickets.

"This is yet another example of a growing two-tier Britain where those paying in increasingly feel they get less back than those drawing from the system.

"Ministers need to put an end to these endless perks and discounts."

GB News found that Historic Royal Palaces may have offered as much as £8,175,384 in discounts through its scheme, as an upper estimate.

Standard ticket prices at its locations range from £37 to £7.50, though benefits claimants can enter for £1.

Kew Gardens offers a similar scheme, with £1,730,184 thought to have been lost through its £1 tickets - a major reduction from their typical £25 price.

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At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, Kew's "Manifesto for Change" declared its 300 acres of landscape "must be accessible to a wide range of audiences".

The "manifesto" set out a 10-year plan in order to tackle the "age of extinction" and "climate emergency", while Kew's director Richard Deverell declared that "everyone is welcome" as he announced the scheme.

The Tate, which operates four art galleries in London, Liverpool, and St Ives, has offered concessionary £5 tickets to its paid exhibitions and events.

The institution sold 10,135 exhibition tickets and 231 event tickets, all in the last year.

It said this represented less than one per cent of all its exhibition tickets, and just four per cent of all event tickets.

The Tate is currently hosting an exhibition from Dame Tracey Emin, who has called for Britain's wealthy to take out memberships and pay voluntary donations in order to keep museums free.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has considered charging international tourists to enter museums, with plans made possible in the future via digital ID.

The British Museum has also offered discounted tickets to exhibitions and tours for those claiming Jobseeker's Allowance - around 94,000 people, according to the DWP.

But just 552 of those tickets were sold, with eight being paid alongside an additional donation.

The Natural History Museum has offered over a thousand concessionary tickets to those 94,000 jobseekers - and sold 1,886.

National museums such as the Natural History Museum, British Museum, and Tate are free to the public for general admission, though still run paid exhibitions throughout the year.

A spokesman for the Tate said: "Tate's mission is to increase the public's enjoyment and understanding of art.

"To support public access, Tate offers discounted exhibition and events tickets for individuals receiving universal or pension credit."

An Historic Royal Palaces spokesman said: "The palaces are the setting for the stories that shape us all, and we're bringing them to people in ways that mean more to them.

"We want everyone to find themselves in the spaces and stories we share."

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