Labour’s increase… in advantages: UK might face highest incapacity and incapacity invoice in G7

Fears have been raised that the UK is on track to spend more on health and disability benefits than any other G7 country.

Britain has long been in the middle of the pack for such handouts as a proportion of GDP.

The most recent OECD figures from 2021 suggest that expenditure was running at 1.7 per cent on the metric.

That was below the 2 per cent in Germany, 1.9 per cent in Italy and 1.8 per cent in France – although above the 0.9 per cent in the US and 0.7 per cent in Canada.

However, the Treasury’s OBR watchdog is now forecasting that health and disability benefits will account for 2.2 per cent of GDP by 2030-31.

That would potentially put the UK at the top of the pile, assuming that there is not a similar surge in other countries. 

The figures are unlikely to be exactly comparable, as governments have different welfare systems and data are not collected and presented identically.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves (pictured) have been struggling to rein in the benefits bill 

But they are the the best estimates available to gauge the scale of spending across countries.   

The figures raised fresh alarm about how the UK can cope with the rising burden of benefits.

Labour abandoned efforts to curb £5billion off the spiralling costs last year in the face of a revolt by MPs, and no new legislation is expected in the King’s Speech in May.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves also scrapped the two-child benefit cap, adding to welfare spending.

The IFS think-tank, which has produced similar estimates in the past, told the Telegraph there was little sign other countries had seen an equivalent increase. 

Researcher Eduin Latimer said: ‘We’ve seen this big rise in health related inactivity in the UK I’ve not seen much evidence of those similar trends happening elsewhere.’

A government spokesman told the paper: ‘We’re xing the broken welfare system we inherited, including through a package of measures to tackle the backlog of people waiting for a work capability assessment and save nearly £2billion by the end of the decade. 

‘This is on top of changes to Universal Credit to narrow the gap between what people receive for being unemployed compared to long term sickness.’