Welfare spending to rise by £73.2bn to £406.2bn

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Over the next five years, the OBR is forecasting that UK welfare spending will rise by £73.2bn to £406.2bn.

How does everyone feel about this? I’m livid because I pay lots of tax. I don’t mind paying tax to maintain a civilised society - but this? This is surely taking the piss and will result in weaker and weaker services as the amount of £ available reduces day by day.

YANBU - it’s totally deranged. The every growing uk population can’t function effectively on such a benefits for all basis.

YABU - this welfare spending bill is truly representative of need.

There is more than one definition of disabled.

The one that leads to 25% of the uk is based on the equalities act and this is around reasonable adjustments to access services and in the workplace. Its a fairly useful set of protections that help people work. I would be very reluctant to redefine the definition in the act as i think it is meanigful in this context. I think more work on understanding what is reasonable is needed over what qualifies as disabled. It doesnt really cost the taxpayer for people to have protection at work.

The criteria for benefits are different and more restrictive, and less people are in this category. I think this is the area where welfare costs are relevant.

They do tax the rich and they've increased their taxes and a lot of them have left and now pay nothing to the UK. Because you increase tax does not mean you will get more tax!

NHS. It's been in the news regularly, been confirmed in the Covid Inquiry and is being addressed by Government.

'Repugnant': Do-not-resuscitate orders being given to learning disabled people without consent | ITV News https://share.google/M9346IUiq1knkk03Z

Regarding helping young people into work or training:

An estimated 12.7% of all people aged 16 to 24 years in the UK were not in education, employment or training (NEET) in July to September 2025 - a total of 946,0000

That is 1 in 8 young people.

So we have an ageing population, and an increasing number of young people not working. It’s not sustainable.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/bulletins/youngpeoplenotineducationemploymentortrainingneet/november2025

The government is aware this is an issue and is putting funding to tackle it, which I hope they keep to their word on.

What is unusual is that young men are now more likely to be NEET than young women (historically it was the other way around).

Reasons given are long term sickness, mental health, learning difficulties, and loss of jobs in the hospitality sector so more difficulty finding work.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly9rq35de8o.amp

As a pensioner who pays tax, I don't think that this government is doing enough to get people into work, there is a crisis regarding the number of young who don't work. We need more regular assessments of benefit claimants and training opportunities, especially for young people. A life on benefits should be a last resort, not a lifestyle choice.

A recipe for disaster. You can’t just plonk someone with a disability - severe or otherwise - into any job and just hope for the best. Real disability needs tailored support to find and retain suitable employment. Otherwise you’re going to create a revolving door of disabled people falling in and out of work because they can’t cope with the demands of the job.

The reason so many genuinely disabled people are out of work is that up to this point, there has been no investment into meaningful support. Successive governments have paid lip service with different schemes that are difficult to access and short on funding. So you end up with significant numbers of disabled people who, with the right support, could work, parked on long term benefits instead.

The current shift towards more compulsion for the more severely disabled to engage with work is an extension of that. Labour has come along, and rightly wants to do something meaningful about it, but just like numerous governments before them, the starting point is to blame disabled people themselves for their predicament and words like ‘worshy, scrounger, fraudster’ become the norm. That’s really going to encourage employers to invest in disabled employees isn’t it ?!! You can introduce compulsion to engage all you like, but you can’t force employers to take on disabled people and there needs to be a drive to ensure that work is available with suitable levels of support before you start compelling vulnerable people to engage with the system.

They need to create an economic environment where there are jobs for the young people to do.

All the policies which hampered business from employing people have really impacted on entry level jobs in particular.

They also need a plan for what happens when AI wipes put even more entry level jobs.

There are jobs the problem is people don't want to do them. If their benefits were stopped it would certainly incentivise them to take what job is available.

Agree. In my work I see a lot of people on benefits for illness and disability. many are either in their late fifties/ early sixties and just counting down to retirement and own their own home outright or are in social housing where they get all their rent paid through Universal credit. Most get awarded the LCWRA element of UC making their UC around £850 a month and full rent paid. they then invariably have PIP on top maybe £300- £400 being the most common amounts. This leads to benefits of £1200- £1300 per month to live off and with all your rent paid or no housing costs it's very do-able. There is no incentive to look for work as the amounts are not much less than someone working 37 hours a week on minimum wage. I do appreciate now that this will be changing because the LCWRA element is halving and minimum wage rising but as things currently stand why would someone want to work ? I think a lot of people in this situation don't quite understand that they would be better off working as they would get the work allowance on UC. many have been on these benefits for years and don't want to risk taking a job for fear of losing the LCWRA status and then being no better off.

Broadly agree with what you’re saying as far as disability protection in the workplace is concerned, but l do think the problem with the huge increase in disability benefit claims since PIP was introduced, has its’ roots in the Equality Acts’ definition of disability, which is that the condition itself is not the issue. It’s the impact of that condition on daily life. No diagnosis is necessary, but the impact has to be significant and to last at least a year. So it accounts for temporary conditions as well as permanent disability.

The eligibility to apply for disability benefits is based on that definition and the assessment itself examines the significance of the claimants’ condition and whether it meets the threshold for benefit.

I think it’s this aspect of the definition of disability that has become too broad. Disability benefits should be just that. Reserved for those with permanent and substantial disability, who face difficult barriers to engaging in society, which result in significant extra expense. We need something of a return to the medical model of disability because the social model has broadened the definition to the point where the need to demonstrate extra expense has been diluted and disability benefits can now be claimed by those for whom they were never designed. That is what is unsustainable.

You can't just keep saying this!

Where 👏 are 👏 the 👏 jobs? 👏

Having my benefits stopped wouldn't magically make me be able to do a manual labour job or a driving job. It wouldn't magic away my multiple appointments that are an inconvenience to employers and colleagues. It wouldn't magic away the conditions that mean I'd probably get sacked for absences.

I'm not surprised when she took the option of resigning her job and its ridiculous she was in a position to have everything subsidised. That would tell me a lot about her work ethic.

Given the amount of gaslighting and emotional blackmailing that most employers indulging when anybody is off sick having actual surgery that the NHS doesn’t perform for fun.
It would tell you nothing about her work ethic and everything about the fact that she was sick
As many people are. The fact that you can’t even acknowledge that Surgery would be the very definition of Sick tells us a lot about you

Cleaners, factory workers, hospitality, carers, warehouses

So why decide to go back to work after 18 months, did the benefits stop? Yes, she had surgery and recovered from that and she was ready to return to work. So why she was offered those benefits, I don't know. She was either fit to work or wasn't.

Hospitality is in the doldrums.

Warehouses / factories use robots and other forms of AI and automation if they can instead of people.

Care work might be hard if you’re physically disabled eg in a wheelchair or don’t have two arms.

I dont know how i feel about this in that the word in the act is substantial which is not hugely different than severe. Maybe more examples of what substantial means exactly and a tightening of this would help a lot.

Im also a bit unsure about the idea it has to be permanent rather than at least a year. in that the award isnt for life anyway and it is for personal independence soecifically. If someone, for example, has a disease, is given the all clear, and then spends a year getting a taxi to work due to side effects of the treatment. It doesnt seem that wild to say have £30 a week (low rate mobility) to help towards the cost for that year whilst you need it. A whole year is quite a long qualifying period in a way, but yes it could be more to restrictive.

Id still worry about having a car accident and needing some adjustments in year 2 at work and being sacked because it was anticipated id recover by year 3 or 4.

Biggest change in benefits between 2019/20 and 2025 is non pension health benefits (ie disability/pip). Here’s the source
https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/is-welfare-spending-out-of-control/

I suspect it’s mental health benefits that have spiralled (though I don’t know that but it has been reported). I don’t know how you fix that. As a population, we’re apparently getting sicker and less able to work. Fewer people working = less tax collected = lower amount to go round to pay benefits.

We are stuck in a v vicious cycle

My point is the jobs are not there - you can’t try and do a job that doesn’t exist - or not possible.

How could you push a wheelchair if you’re in a wheelchair? How you physically restrain someone?

The medicines probably cost more than the welfare. Some drugs that are funded by governments cost thousands a month.

I am referring to the benefit claiming population as a whole. Many are not in wheelchairs. What excuse do they have?

So just to be clear you’re complaining when she gets benefits because she’s not fit for work and then you’re complaining that when she is fit for work, she goes back to work ?

Cleaner: good mobility required
Factory worker: good mobility required
Hospitality: good mobility required
Warehouse: good mobility required
Carer: good mobility required and I'd never pass a medical.

Stop being so dense

You can have severe mobility issues and not use a wheelchair. There is a space that exists between "wheelchair user" and "able to spend 35 hours a week on your feet".