UK Public Spending — The Honest Numbers

These are nominal figures — not adjusted for inflation. In real terms the 2010-11 figure is higher than it appears; real-terms growth since 2010-11 is approximately 30%, not the 81% implied by the nominal comparison. TME includes both current spending and capital investment. Some commentators cite DEL only (day-to-day department spending), which produces a lower headline number.

A stable percentage of GDP can mask significant real-terms growth if the economy itself has grown slowly — as in the UK post-2010. Different sources define public spending differently; TME includes debt interest which some international comparisons exclude. The OBR forecasts spending to remain around 43–44% of GDP through 2030-31.

The welfare total includes both DWP spending and non-DWP welfare (e.g. tax credits via HMRC). The State Pension sits outside the welfare cap — the government has committed to the triple lock until at least 2029. The IFS has found that working-age benefit spending per recipient has fallen in real terms since 2010 due to the benefit cap and UC rollout. The rise in the welfare bill is a State Pension and disability story, not a working-age benefits story.

PIP replaced Disability Living Allowance for working-age adults from 2013. Approximately 1.86 million people were already on DLA before PIP launched — the growth shown is genuine, not a relabelling of existing claimants. Do not cite the PIP series from 2014-15 at face value as a growth trend: it starts near zero because DLA claimants were still being migrated across. Always use the combined DLA+PIP series for any growth comparison. These figures cover working-age only and exclude Attendance Allowance (paid to older people) and child DLA.

Condition categories in DWP statistics are self-reported at the point of claim. A claimant with multiple conditions is recorded under their primary condition only. The psychiatric category includes anxiety disorders, depression, PTSD, autism spectrum conditions, and ADHD — a wide range with very different functional impacts and employment outcomes. The government's 2025 welfare reforms specifically target the psychiatric/mental health PIP caseload by tightening assessment criteria for conditions without objective clinical markers.

The £75.7bn OBR aggregate and the £22.6bn PIP figure are both correct — they measure different things. The OBR definition includes benefits that disabled people receive alongside, but not solely because of, their PIP award. Local authority costs (Council Tax Reduction, SEND) sit entirely outside central government welfare statistics. There is no single official national figure for Council Tax Reduction spending since it was devolved to local authorities in 2013.