Uk Jobless Down But Welfare Spending Up

Social security spending in Britain jumped to almost £89 billion ($138.7 billion) in the last financial year, data on Thursday showed, dealing a fresh blow to government plans to cut public spending.

Total social security spending in the fiscal year 1995-96 was £88.787 billion compared with £84.866 billion in 1994-95, the government statistical service said.

The rise came despite a sharp drop in Britain's jobless rate and the number of people claiming unemployment benefit during that period. Unemployment recipients dropped by 71,000 to 387,000 by last November while the number on income support also fell, by 5,000 to 5.7 million. But these falls were more than offset by rises in the number of people claiming a range of other benefits including family credit, sickness benefit, one parent benefit and invalidity benefit.

 

The number receiving sickness and invalidity benefit rose by 157,000 to 2.4 million in the year to April 1995. But new regulations covering incapacity benefits should have cut the number of claimants since then. Spending on retirement pensions continued to make the biggest hole in the budget at £30.1 billion. The number of pensioners rose slightly to 10.3 million by last September, up 122,000 from the previous year. Social security secretary Peter Lilley has been conducting a review of welfare spending in a bid to stem the increase.

A government spokesman denied Lilley's efforts had been unsuccessful. Thanks to the changes made over the last three or four years, social security spending has only grown by around 1.3 per cent a year instead of at 4.0 per cent a year which it would have done without the changes.