Carry on claiming: welfare spending £5 billion a year higher than expected

Published: 11:04 EDT, 28 October 2026 | Updated: 11:24 EDT, 28 October 2026 Welfare spending will be £5billion a year higher than expected after John Healey failed to set out a plan to slash benefits in his Budget.The Chancellor was accused of allowing Britain to drown in an ‘out-of-control welfare system’ as the fiscal watchdog warned costs will spiral over the next five years.Total welfare spending will hit £413.1billion a year in 2030-31 - up from the £406.9billion of spending forecast in March, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).Health and disability benefits will exceed £100billion a year by the 2028-29 financial year, up from £85.6billion in 2025-26.It was previously forecast to rise to more than £100billion a year in 2029-30.The Tories accused Labour of being ‘addicted’ to spending on benefits, with the Chancellor kicking reforms later into the Parliament.John Healey told the Commons that two long-awaited reviews will report next month, and he said the overall bill would be brought down in a ‘Labour way’.Mr Healey said Alan Milburn’s review into the youth unemployment crisis and the review into personal independence payments by disability minister Sir Stephen Timms would both be published in November. Chancellor John Healey said he would bring down the welfare bill in a 'Labour way'But he failed to explicitly set out how he would bring the bill down. Responding to his Budget in the Commons, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said: 'Britain is about to collapse under the weight of welfare. We have to start showing people some tough love.'He talks about giving people breathing space but they are the ones choking the economy.'And shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith told the Mail: ‘Labour’s addiction to welfare spending is alive and kicking. Unfortunately it comes at the price of more debt and borrowing in every year of their plan.’Joe Shalam, policy director at the Centre for Social Justice think tank, accused the Government of ‘fudging’ the hard choices.‘That was the fudge-it Budget,’ he said. ‘Faced with a welfare crisis, a million young people out of work or training and communities trapped in poverty, the government has, for now, handed out a few sweeteners and fudged the hard choices until the next review.‘Meanwhile, sickness benefit spending is now forecast to exceed £100 billion by the end of the decade and 6.7 million people are on out-of-work benefits, while the rest of the country is dragged into higher tax to pay for inaction. Public support for the system there to protect the most disadvantaged is being pushed to breaking point.’The OBR forecast said that, compared to the March 2026 forecast, welfare spending is set to be ‘higher across the forecast by an average of £5billion a year, and by £6billion by 2030-31’.It attributed the increase to higher benefit uprating increases and higher forecast health-related universal credit caseloads.