More than three million people are now claiming out of work benefits due to a health condition or disability after an increase of almost a million people in a year under Labour, new figures show.
The number claiming Universal Credit (UC) because of their health has soared by 41 per cent in the year to September 2025 – increasing by 933,000 people to a record 3.2 million.
Of these 2.5 million – or 77 per cent – were deemed to have a ‘limited capability for work and work-related activity’, meaning they can claim benefits without having to look for a job.
The Department for Work and Pensions figures show the proportion claiming UC health with no requirement to seek work increased by 54 per cent between 2020 and 2025.
The DWP said the majority of the 933,000 increase in the last year is due to benefits claimants being moved from the old Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) onto UC health. The department said that without this, the number of people on incapacity benefits had increased by about 208,000 people over the past year.
However the figures show that as of September 2025 there were 1.1million people on UC health who had been moved from ESA out of the 3.2 million total – with 90 per cent of these not being required to seek work to get benefits.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately said that Labour has ‘no grip on welfare’ with ‘more money going out to people with no requirement to work or look for work’.
‘We know some people are too sick to work, but even if you put to one side those transitioning from older sickness benefits, this is still a 10 per cent increase,’ she said. ‘The UK can’t be getting that much sicker, that fast.
‘That’s why the Conservatives are reviewing the benefits system, and we will limit support for those claiming only with low-level mental health conditions and bring down the ballooning welfare bill.’
The figures came as a new study revealed that thousands of people have switched to claiming disability benefits after having their welfare payments cut.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) examined a series of welfare cuts pushed through by the Tory government. In each case it found that some of those affected went on to claim disability benefits instead.
Eduin Latimer, one of the report’s authors, said: ‘Across four different reforms, we find an unintended consequence of benefit cuts – that they lead to more people claiming disability benefits.’
He added: ‘These effects will likely also have a long-term legacy, as people often stay on disability benefits for many years.’
The study examined cuts to housing benefit in 2011; the increase in the state pension age for women; the lowering of the overall benefit cap in 2016; and requiring single parents to prove they are looking for a job to get out-of-work benefits.
In each case, it found some people switched to claiming disability benefits at a total cost estimated at £900 million, reducing planned savings.
The think tank suggested that the surge in cases since the pandemic is also ‘likely’ to be due in part because of the impact of the cost-of-living crisis.
The DWP figures show that almost two in five people claiming Universal Credit are now doing so because of their health – up by seven percentage points from September 2024.
Some 53 per cent of UC health claimants are female, 42 per cent are aged 50 and over and almost one in ten are aged under 25.
As of September, 294,000 were awaiting the decision of a Work Capability Assessment (WCA), 430,000 had a limited capability for work (LCW), and 2.5 million were assessed as limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA) so are ‘not required to undertake any interviews or work-related activity’.
Of all the WCA’s between January 2022 and August 2025, at least 61 per cent of claimants are recorded as having ‘mental and behavioural disorders’, the figures show.
A DWP spokesman: ‘The number of people on incapacity benefits has increased by 6 per cent over the past year.
‘The vast majority of the increase in the UC Health caseload is because the decision was taken by the last government to move sick and disabled people from Employment and Support Allowance onto Universal Credit – a transition we inherited, along with a system where the incentives were wrong and health claims had been growing since 2019.
‘We’re determined to fix the broken system we inherited and are removing the financial incentives in Universal Credit that discourage work, and we have redeployed 1,000 work coaches to help thousands of sick and disabled people who were previously left without contact for years.’
