Surge in UK ill-health welfare not due to healthcare delays, study says

By David Milliken

LONDON (Reuters) -A surge in claims for sickness and disability benefits in Britain since the COVID-19 pandemic does not appear to be driven by increased delays for hospital treatment or mental health care, a study said on Friday.

While benefit claims and delays in the National Health Service have both risen, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the apparent relationship between the two broke down when it examined English data on an area-by-area basis.

"The results strongly indicate that deteriorating NHS performance ... is to blame, at most, for a small fraction of the overall increase in receipt of health-related benefits among working-age individuals in recent years," the think tank said.

Britain's government has said improved access to mental health and other medical support is key to reducing soaring welfare costs. Other researchers have suggested that funds could be further targeted in this way in a public spending review next month.

But the IFS said that at most around 7% of the rise in benefit claims related to mental illness or musculo-skeletal problems could be linked to long waiting times for treatment, and there was less impact for other medical conditions.

"Reducing hospital waiting times is a sensible policy objective," IFS economist Max Warner said. "But we shouldn't necessarily expect it to also deliver a significant reduction in health-related benefit claims. That's a separate policy nut to crack."

Between November 2019 and May 2024 the number of working-age adults receiving health-related benefits in England rose by 40% to around 3 million, while the number of people on hospital waiting lists grew by two thirds to 7.6 million.

Annual spending on disability and long-term sickness benefits for working age people across the whole of the United Kingdom is around 41 billion pounds ($55 billion).

The researchers said increased benefit claims might be linked to more general ill health or other healthcare problems such as difficulty accessing family doctors.

A report published in January by a committee in Britain's upper house of parliament said greater disability benefit claims might reflect higher payouts than standard unemployment benefits and inadequate government checks on the ill-health of claimants.

($1 = 0.7523 pounds)

(Reporting by David MillikenEditing by William Schomberg)