Shocking figures reveal UK spends double the defence budget on working age benefits

The UK spends much than doubly arsenic overmuch connected benefits for working-age radical arsenic it does connected defence each year, a caller investigation by The Independent can reveal, laying bare the shocking standard of Britain’s payment bill.

As Sir Keir Starmer faces a imaginable backlash implicit plans to extremity disablement payments for astir 1 cardinal people, figures from the Department for Work and Pensions amusement the authorities walk connected each working-age benefits is £117.6bn – representing 4.5 per cent of GDP and is 9.2 per cent of the government’s wide budget.

That is much than treble the magnitude spent connected defence (£56.4bn) and much than the full acquisition fund (£116bn).

The erstwhile caput of the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord West warned: “This is unsustainable if we privation to debar warfare and past arsenic a nation.”

The discrepancy with defence spending appears to beryllium stark successful what is present wide acknowledged to beryllium a “dangerous world”, with wars successful Ukraine and the Middle East.

The premier curate has already pledged to summation defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 and 3 per cent by 2030.

Critics are acrophobic that Sir Keir’s authorities has not afloat grasped the nettle of benefits betterment and needs to spell good beyond the £5bn of savings outlined by enactment and pensions caput Liz Kendall.

Former enactment and pensions caput Sir Iain Duncan Smith warned: “To govern is to take and against the backdrop of an progressively unsafe world, the request to put importantly much successful defence and a flatlining economy, further betterment of payment is simply a necessity.”

Sir Iain was liable for the past large betterment of the benefits strategy during David Cameron’s conjugation authorities erstwhile helium introduced cosmopolitan credit.

But since the pandemic, the payment measure has ballooned, mostly due to the fact that of applications for semipermanent intelligence wellness problems specified arsenic slump and anxiety.

The proportionality of the colonisation reporting a disablement has risen from 19 per cent to 24 per cent since Covid – a higher leap than Germany, France and the Netherlands.

According to the figures, 9.9 cardinal radical are claiming immoderate signifier of benefits – 14.5 per cent of the population. This includes 939,365 of those aged 16 to 24, who marque up 9.4 per cent of each claimants.

But contempt the mounting bill, Sir Keir is facing unit from the unions and left-wing Labour MPs to enactment backmost connected the plans successful Ms Kendall’s greenish insubstantial connected payment reform.

Fire Brigades Union wide caput Steve Wright has called connected Labour MPs to ballot against the government’s “Thatcherite assault” connected disabled payment claimants.

Mr Wright warned that the multi-million-pound cuts would pb to 1980s levels of poverty.

Veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott said: “Cutting disablement benefits isn’t a motivation crusade. It’s a governmental prime to equilibrium the books connected backs of immoderate of the poorest and astir susceptible radical successful our society.”

Ms Abbott has called for a wealthiness taxation to beryllium imposed alternatively of benefits which has backing from elder commercialized national figures.

Unite wide caput Sharon Graham said: “The authorities is successful information of making the incorrect choices. We indispensable beryllium protecting the astir susceptible successful nine and not pitting the poorest against the poorest.

“Before cutting benefits, the authorities should beryllium introducing a wealthiness tax, truthful that the precise wealthiest successful nine statesman paying their just share.

“The rule of getting radical backmost into enactment is close but we request joined-up reasoning to guarantee we are creating jobs and grooming for radical to spell into. That is astir concern successful manufacturing and creating jobs for the future. Over a 3rd of radical connected benefits are already successful work, we request to guarantee that enactment pays for everyone.”

Meanwhile, others person accused the authorities of making a governmental choice. The firefighters’ national person Mr Wright said that Blairite furniture ministers were “gleefully eulogising” astir the cutbacks.

He said: “The government’s drastic cuts to disablement and payment benefits are a Thatcherite battle connected the payment state.

“Cutting benefits volition origin a surge successful nutrient slope usage and pb to poorness levels past seen successful the 1980s.

“Labour successful authorities has a work to enactment the poorest and astir susceptible by backing a generous payment state.”

He added: “Cabinet ministers similar Liz Kendall and Pat McFadden are gleefully eulogising successful broadcast interviews astir the request to chopped the derisory payments made to the disabled and vulnerable. It’s shameful that a Labour authorities should follow that Thatcherite approach.”

But the premier curate has warned that the existent strategy is “actively incentivising” radical distant from enactment and represents an “affront to the values of our country”.

He said: “This is not conscionable unfair to taxpayers. It is besides a atrocious semipermanent result for galore of those people.”