Do disability benefits need reform?

So before we zoom in on the, the nuts and bolts of disability benefits, Edwin, I think we should start big picture on kind of the overall benefits system.

So, so kind of get people up to speed on how big a benefit spending overall and how's that been changing.

So if we think about the total size of the economy, what we produce every year, um, about 5% of that, just under that, we spend on the working age benefit system, and then a bit more than that, more like 6% we spend on pensioners.

And if we look at how these things have changed over time, so zooming in on the working age and children's system support children as well, since the beginning of 2010s, it's been fall- it was falling, uh, partly due to improving economic conditions and partly due to policy decisions made by the Conservative and Coalition governments, and it fell to 4.2% of GDP, um, in 2019.

And then following 2019, it's zoomed back up again and has reached 4.7% of GDP and is set to reach around 5% of GDP by the end of the decade.

Um, so I think it's really interesting that we've had this kind of boomerang effect where intentional decision to cut back on benefits spending, um, and then since 2019, we've seen this boomerang and this big increase in spending.

And the big part of the story there is related to disability benefits.

So fill us in, well, how, how much of, how much of spending on disability benefits changed over time?

So if we think about disability benefits, thinking specifically about PIP or equivalent benefits, which we spend on working age people, that's gone up from around fourteen billion in, uh, 2019 to twenty-five billion around now and is forecast to reach thirty-four billion by the end of the decade.

So those are some really punchy increases.

And it's worth underlying that they really are big numbers, partly big because it's a small benefit, and actually it's a big increase, but also big relative to the broader public finance situation.

So for example, the number you've just set out, the, just the increase in the spending on personal independence payments would be sufficient to fund the government's ambition to get to 3% of, on spending on defense.

It's that kind of scale of-

Yeah, exactly

... of, of benefit increase that we're, that we're talking about.

And it's important to say that basically that's the main story as to why you've seen the overall b- working age benefit bill going up.

It's increases in disability benefits in particular, and then also other health related benefits.