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The cost of sickness benefits will surge by more than a third by the end of the decade as Britain’s worklessness crisis deepens, official forecasts show.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expects spending on health and disability benefits to rise from £65.7bn this year to £90.9bn in 2028-29.
The total includes payments to children, working-age adults and retirees coping with health problems and comes amid a sharp rise in claims for mental health conditions and back pain among all ages.
Detailed forecasts published by the tax and spending watchdog on Thursday show the bill for working-age adults alone is on course to hit £68.5bn this decade as increasing numbers of people are signed-off for mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression.
The OBR also predicted that the amount spent on child health and disability benefits would almost double to £6.2bn by the end of the decade.
The number of people receiving welfare to support children with behavioural disorders has already trebled over the past five years to more than 150,000, while the number claiming support for boys and girls with learning difficulties has increased by 37 per cent to 303,000.
Claims related to ADHD have climbed 23pc to almost 64,000.
Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, raised the alarm about the surge in mental health claims this week when he told The Telegraph that the “normal anxieties of life” were being labelled as illnesses.
However, Mr Stride sparked a backlash from doctors after he said the country’s approach to mental health risked having “gone too far”.
Dr Lade Smith, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, described Mr Stride’s comments as “disappointing”. In a letter to The Telegraph, Dr Smith censured Mr Stride for “diminish[ing] and misrepresent[ing] people with mental illness”.
“This is not simply a ‘culture’ that will go away on its own. People are not pretending to be sick – they really are sick,” she said.
Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman refused to repeat Mr Stride’s comments, instead stating that the Prime Minister welcomed the fact that “as a society we are more comfortable discussing mental health” while seeking to “tackle the underlying issues” behind the increase in claimants.
Public health minister Dame Andrea Leadsom told LBC that she “wouldn’t frame it in exactly the same terms” but said that Mr Stride’s point was “really important”.
Health and disability benefits, which include payments made even when people are in work as well as to those who are jobless, make up a growing share of overall welfare spending.
The overall benefits bill, which also includes things like the state pension and housing support, is forecast to rise to £360bn in five years’ time – or more than 11pc of total economic output.
Benefits are increasing rapidly amid a sharp increase in worklessness since the pandemic struck. A total of 9.25 million people of working age are classed as economically inactive because they are neither in work nor looking for a job.
This includes more than 2.7 million who say long-term sickness is keeping them out of the jobs market, up by 630,000 since the start of the pandemic.
At the same time, employers have more than 900,000 jobs available but are struggling to fill vacancies.
A combination of more people out of work and the rising benefits bill is putting increased pressure on taxpayers who are in work.
Separate analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) showed Britain’s middle and high income households were facing the worst hit to living standards since the 1960s under the Tories.
Middle and high-income families have been left worse off by frozen tax brackets and high inflation, the analysis showed.
The think tank warned that the incomes of middle and high-earning families were now around 1.6pc lower than they were in 2019.
By the end of this parliament, the middle and upper classes are on course to have experienced the largest setback to living standards since records began in 1961, the IFS said.
Inequality has decreased as a result of the slump in living standards but the think tank said this was only because all income brackets had “performed very poorly” in recent years.
Incomes for the poorest third of households have also declined by 0.1pc since 2019 in one of the worst falls on record.
The IFS said the data failed to capture “the true increase in deprivation” during the cost of living crisis, as millions more people struggled to afford food and heating.
The number of people facing food insecurity has risen by more than two million to 7.3 million.
Meanwhile, some 4.3 million more people cannot heat their homes properly, bringing the total to 7.2 million.
Sam Ray-Chaudhuri, an economist at IFS and author of the report, said: “With further poor income growth forecast, and an unenviable fiscal position, bringing about a substantial improvement in living standards will be a significant challenge for the next government.”
A government spokesman said: “Our landmark welfare reforms will help an extra one million people break down the barriers to work, as this government makes work pay – cutting taxes for the average worker by more than £900.
“The OBR estimates our recent Budget measures will see an extra 200,000 people into work, while our £2.5bn Back to Work plan will help thousands find jobs.
“This is bolstered by our changes to disability benefits as we focus on what people can do, not what they can’t – cutting the number of people due to be put on the highest tier of incapacity benefits by 370,000 and helping everyone to reap the rewards of work.”