REPORT FINDS WELFARE SPENDING OUTSTRIPPED INFRASTRUCTURE BY £1.1TRN

The Centre for Social Justice said public spending on welfare has outstripped investment in infrastructure by £1.1 trillion over the past two decades, according to a report published on Tuesday. The report, titled "State of Dependency", said welfare had acted as "an anaesthetic" that kept parts of the country "numbed" during two decades of economic decline. It said the UK spent £1.6 trillion on working-age benefits between 2006/7 and 2024/25. This exceeded combined spending on transport, science and technology, housing, economic development and local amenities, the think tank said.

The report compared this with the period from 1945 to 1979, when Britain spent 4.5 per cent of GDP on infrastructure against 2.5 per cent on working-age welfare, according to the CSJ. It said those proportions have since reversed, with 5 per cent of GDP now spent on benefits and 2.5 per cent on infrastructure. The think tank named the North of England, the Midlands and South Wales as regions where economic output per person has barely grown in two decades. It said these regions had some of the highest rates of worklessness in the country.

The findings were published as Chancellor John Healey faces pressure from opposition parties to reduce spending on benefits ahead of the Budget on 28 October, the CSJ said. Ben Gregg, head of welfare at the think tank, said governments had tried for decades to compensate struggling regions for decline rather than reverse it. He said welfare had been used "to numb the pain instead of providing a reason to hope". Gregg said a Britain where everyone has a stake in prosperity would put good jobs and thriving towns within reach of every community.