Department for Work and Pensions

Of the £333.7 billion forecast for 2025/26, roughly 55 percent goes to pensioners: £177.8 billion, of which £146.1 billion is the State Pension alone. Working age and children's welfare accounts for £145.3 billion. Disability and health related benefits cost £76.9 billion. Housing benefits cost £37.8 billion. These are not marginal budget lines. They are the fiscal centre of gravity of the British state.

Eleven Secretaries of State have served since 2010: Iain Duncan Smith, Stephen Crabb (four months), Damian Green (resigned over misconduct allegations), David Gauke, Esther McVey (resigned over Brexit), Amber Rudd (resigned over Brexit), Thérèse Coffey, Chloe Smith (49 days under Truss), Mel Stride, Liz Kendall and Pat McFadden. Duncan Smith resigned in March 2016 in protest at George Osborne's plans to cut disability benefits, saying the government could not "keep on asking those with the least to bear the brunt." It was the most consequential resignation by a Work and Pensions Secretary in modern history and exposed the central tension the department has never resolved: the gap between cutting welfare costs and protecting the vulnerable.

The State Pension illustrates the dilemma with the clearest numbers. Under the triple lock, the new State Pension rose to £230.25 per week in 2025/26, a 4.1 percent increase. The basic State Pension reached £176.45. That is nearly twice the £92.05 per week received by someone over 25 on Jobseeker's Allowance. The divergence has been growing for decades. Pensions were linked to earnings and then protected by the triple lock. Unemployment benefits have fallen in real terms relative to wages for 40 years. The result is a welfare system that is generous to pensioners and increasingly harsh to working age claimants. Whether that balance reflects national priorities or political cowardice depends on who is asking.

Universal Credit's standard allowance for a single person aged 25 or over is £400.14 per month. Benefits were uprated by 1.7 percent in April 2025, in line with CPI. The system was intended to simplify welfare and strengthen work incentives. In some respects it has. Multiple benefits were brought under a single system. Administrative complexity was reduced. But the broader problems remain. The government is conducting a review of Universal Credit to ensure it is "fit for the future" on living standards, poverty reduction and making work pay. That review was announced in 2025. The system it is reviewing was announced in 2010.

Disability and incapacity spending is the area most resistant to control. The £76.9 billion forecast for 2025/26 has been rising year on year. The government initially proposed tightening PIP eligibility criteria, then backed down. The cost of not reforming: £3.9 billion by 2029/30. A PIP review led by Minister Stephen Timms was launched in June 2025 and will not report until autumn 2026. Separately, the Carer's Allowance overpayments scandal, in which carers were asked to repay thousands of pounds after exceeding a low earnings threshold without being warned, prompted an independent review. These are not marginal administrative issues. They are the visible face of a system that traps people in bureaucratic distress.

The DWP's own operating budget is £9.6 billion, with a capital budget of £579 million. It has launched 17 trailblazer projects to test ways of reducing economic inactivity. In September 2025, responsibility for apprenticeships and adult skills was transferred into DWP from the Department for Education, an acknowledgement that skills and welfare policy had been operating in separate silos while employers reported they could not find workers and millions of working age people remained out of the labour market. Pension Credit applications surged 81 percent between July 2024 and February 2025 following media campaigns, suggesting that many eligible pensioners had simply never been told about the support available.

The department can point to genuine operational achievements. Millions of pension payments are delivered reliably. Universal Credit replaced a tangle of legacy systems. Employment support has moved people into work. The welfare system prevents significant hardship for millions of households. These are not small things.

What concerns taxpayers is the trajectory. Welfare spending was £314.9 billion last year. It will be £408.6 billion in five years. That is a £94 billion increase in half a decade. The triple lock alone will push the State Pension bill past £146 billion this year. Disability spending is rising with no reform plan in place until autumn 2026 at the earliest. Economic inactivity among working age people has risen. The department's own description of its purpose is to help people "move into employment and financial independence." The spending forecast suggests the opposite is happening.

The public will not judge the DWP by how efficiently it processes claims. It will judge it by whether more people support themselves through secure work, whether the welfare bill becomes sustainable and whether future generations can afford the promises being made today. A department spending £334 billion a year and heading for £409 billion within five years while economic inactivity rises and reform keeps being deferred is not a department in control of its trajectory. It is a department running to stand still on an escalator moving the wrong way.