Government claims of ‘spiralling’ spending on benefits are false and ‘ideological’, official figures show

Official figures prove that government claims that social security spending is “spiralling out of control” are “not based on any real facts”, say disabled activists.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) figures show instead that total spending as a proportion of GDP* is predicted not to increase at all next year, and then to stay at the same level for the next four years.

It is also predicted to be lower this year, again as a proportion of GDP, than it was for every year from 2010-11 to 2015-16.

This provides a stark contrast to claims from the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), of “spiralling” spending on benefits.

The figures were originally highlighted on Twitter/X by Ratigan, a disabled welfare rights campaigner.

He told Disability News Service: “It’s perplexing to me that the government is choosing to push a narrative that can be so easily discredited by publicly available information.

“Data from the OBR clearly shows that not only is welfare spending lower than a decade ago, it’s also not forecast to rise over the next five years; saying that welfare spending is ‘out of control’ is simply false.”

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said the figures “show that the continuing attacks against disabled people are purely ideological and not based on any real facts.

“Their behaviour is the cause of an increasingly hostile environment for disabled people and unlikely to facilitate people getting into work and remaining in employment.”

The government’s repeated claims of “spiralling” spending are likely to be aimed at softening up the public ahead of announcing cuts to future spending on benefits in next month’s spring statement, and DWP’s imminent green paper on disability benefits.

Caroline Collier, from Inclusion Barnet’s Campaign for Disability Justice, said: “At the Campaign for Disability Justice, we are pleased to see Disability News Service highlighting this important OBR finding, and helping it get the attention it deserves.

“This is an important counterbalance to unhelpful narratives about welfare affordability, and supports our view that a decent benefit system is a vital – and affordable – building block in ensuring that we can all access support in times of need.”

Last August, chancellor Rachel Reeves said the previous government had “let welfare costs spiral out of control”.

In January, DWP said in a press release on benefit fraud that it wanted to “tackle the spiralling welfare bill”.

And earlier this month, in a press release on disability employment, DWP claimed again that benefits spending was “spiralling”.

DWP refused to confirm that the figures were accurate, or to say if Kendall would now correct the record to show that the social security bill was not “spiralling”.

Instead, it offered figures relating to spending on disability benefits, and on total “welfare spending for Great Britain” over a different time period – and without putting it in the context of rising GDP – which it said had risen from £97.3 billion to £137.5 billion “since the pandemic” and was “expected to be” £164.6 billion by the end of the decade.

*Gross domestic product, the size of the country’s economy in a particular year

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