The UK spends more than twice as much on benefits for working-age people as it does on defence each year, a new analysis by The Independent can reveal, laying bare the shocking scale of Britain’s welfare bill.
As Sir Keir Starmer faces a potential backlash over plans to end disability payments for around 1 million people, figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show the government spend on all working-age benefits is £117.6bn – representing 4.5 per cent of GDP and is 9.2 per cent of the government’s overall budget.
That is more than double the amount spent on defence (£56.4bn) and more than the entire education budget (£116bn).
The former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord West warned: “This is unsustainable if we wish to avoid war and survive as a nation.”
The discrepancy with defence spending appears to be stark in what is now widely acknowledged to be a “dangerous world”, with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The prime minister has already pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 and 3 per cent by 2030.
Critics are concerned that Sir Keir’s government has not fully grasped the nettle of benefits reform and needs to go well beyond the £5bn of savings outlined by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall.
Former work and pensions secretary Sir Iain Duncan Smith warned: “To govern is to choose and against the backdrop of an increasingly unsafe world, the need to invest significantly more in defence and a flatlining economy, further reform of welfare is a necessity.”
Sir Iain was responsible for the last major reform of the benefits system during David Cameron’s coalition government when he introduced universal credit.
But since the pandemic, the welfare bill has ballooned, largely because of applications for long-term mental health problems such as depression and anxiety.
The proportion of the population reporting a disability has risen from 19 per cent to 24 per cent since Covid – a higher jump than Germany, France and the Netherlands.
According to the figures, 9.9 million people are claiming some form of benefits – 14.5 per cent of the population. This includes 939,365 of those aged 16 to 24, who make up 9.4 per cent of all claimants.
But despite the mounting bill, Sir Keir is facing pressure from the unions and left-wing Labour MPs to row back on the plans in Ms Kendall’s green paper on welfare reform.
Fire Brigades Union general secretary Steve Wright has called on Labour MPs to vote against the government’s “Thatcherite assault” on disabled benefit claimants.
Mr Wright warned that the multi-million-pound cuts would lead to 1980s levels of poverty.
Veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott said: “Cutting disability benefits isn’t a moral crusade. It’s a political choice to balance the books on backs of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society.”
Ms Abbott has called for a wealth tax to be imposed instead of benefits which has backing from senior trade union figures.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “The government is in danger of making the wrong choices. We must be protecting the most vulnerable in society and not pitting the poorest against the poorest.
“Before cutting benefits, the government should be introducing a wealth tax, so that the very wealthiest in society begin paying their fair share.
“The principle of getting people back into work is right but we need joined-up thinking to ensure we are creating jobs and training for people to go into. That is about investment in manufacturing and creating jobs for the future. Over a third of people on benefits are already in work, we need to ensure that work pays for everyone.”
Meanwhile, others have accused the government of making a political choice. The firefighters’ union leader Mr Wright said that Blairite cabinet ministers were “gleefully eulogising” about the cutbacks.
He said: “The government’s drastic cuts to disability and welfare benefits are a Thatcherite assault on the welfare state.
“Cutting benefits will cause a surge in food bank use and lead to poverty levels last seen in the 1980s.
“Labour in government has a duty to support the poorest and most vulnerable by funding a generous welfare state.”
He added: “Cabinet ministers like Liz Kendall and Pat McFadden are gleefully eulogising in broadcast interviews about the need to cut the derisory payments made to the disabled and vulnerable. It’s shameful that a Labour government should adopt that Thatcherite approach.”
But the prime minister has warned that the current system is “actively incentivising” people away from work and represents an “affront to the values of our country”.
He said: “This is not just unfair to taxpayers. It is also a bad long-term outcome for many of those people.”
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