Sickness benefits bill to rise by a third
Worklessness crisis fuels increase as welfare costs forecast to hit £90bn by end of decade
THE cost of sickness benefits will rise by more than a third by the end of the decade as Britain’s worklessness crisis deepens, official forecasts show.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expects spending on health and disability benefits to rise from £65.7billion this year to £90.9billion in 2028-29.
The total includes payments to children, working-age adults and retirees with health problems, and comes amid a sharp rise in claims for mental health conditions and back pain among all ages.
Forecasts published by the tax and spending watchdog yesterday show the bill for working-age adults alone is on course to hit £68.5billion this decade, as increasing numbers of people are signed off for mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression.
The OBR also predicted that the amount spent on child health and disability benefits would almost double to £6.2billion by the end of the decade.
The number of people claiming benefits for children with behavioural disorders has trebled over the past five years to more than 150,000, while the number claiming benefits for a child with learning difficulties has increased by 37 per cent to 303,000. Claims related to ADHD have climbed 23 per cent to almost 64,000.
Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, raised the alarm about the surge in mental health claims this week when he told The Telegraph that the “normal anxieties of life” were being labelled as illnesses. However, he sparked a backlash from doctors after he said the country’s approach to mental health risked having “gone too far”.
Dr Lade Smith, the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, described Mr Stride’s comments as “disappointing”. In a letter to The Telegraph, Dr Smith censured Mr Stride for “diminish[ing] and misrepresent[ing] people with mental illness”.
Rishi Sunak’s spokesman refused to repeat Mr Stride’s comments, instead stating that the Prime Minister welcomed the fact that “as a society, we are more comfortable discussing mental health”. Dame Andrea Leadsom, the public health minister, told LBC that she “wouldn’t frame it in exactly the same terms” but said that Mr Stride’s point was “really important".
Health and disability benefits, which include payments to those in work as well as those who are jobless, make up a growing share of total welfare spending. The overall benefits bill, which includes support such as the state pension and housing welfare, is forecast to rise to £360billion in five years’ time – more than 11 per cent of total economic output.
Benefit claims have increased rapidly because of a rise in worklessness since the pandemic. A total of 9.25million people of working age are classed as economically inactive because they are neither in work nor looking for a job. This includes more than 2.7 million who say long-term sickness is keeping them out of the jobs market, up by 630,000 since the start of the pandemic.
A combination of more people out of work and the rising benefits bill is also putting increased pressure on working taxpayers. Analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) showed Britain’s middle- and high-income households were facing the worst hit to living standards since the 1960s under the Tories.
The think tank said inequality had decreased as a result of the slump in living standards, but that this was only because all income brackets had “performed very poorly”. The IFS said the data failed to capture “the true increase in deprivation” during the cost of living crisis, as millions more people struggled to afford food and heating.
A government spokesman said: “Our landmark welfare reforms will help an extra one million people break down the barriers to work, as this Government makes work pay – cutting taxes for the average worker by more than £900. The OBR estimates our recent Budget measures will see an extra 200,000 people into work, while our £2.5billion Back to Work plan will help thousands find jobs.”