Department for Work and Pensions

Stories

• Economic inactivity rate is 21.8% with 9.2million people aged between 16 and 64 not in work.
• 20,000 people off work due to mental health problems every month.
• More than 5million are on out of work benefits.
• Pays out £108 a week if you have one of these 57 medical conditions or disabilities including "unknown" and other diseases with a wide spectrum of symptoms.
• Saorsa Amatheia Tweedale, the Department for Work and Pensions diversity ambassador, compares taking children puberty blockers to taking the contraceptive pill.
• Offers to pay benefits to people with multiple spouses.
• Five Bulgarian nationals admitted stealing over £50 million from the Department for Work and Pensions.
• The UK economic inactivity rate for those aged 16 to 64 years was 22.2%.
• 3.9million people receiving out of work benefits.
• The number of people inactive because of long-term sickness reached 850,000 in 2024.
• Spent £69bn on benefits for people of working age with a disability or health conditions in 2024.
• Youngsters not in work or education rise to 870,000 in 2024.
• Polish couple stole £700,000 with bogus claims and tried to leave the country.
• No longer publishes statistics by nationality for income tax, national insurance, tax credits and child benefits.
• Wasted £13.9 billion due to fraud and error in one year.
• Assumed a 5% increase in fraudulent behaviour each year in its forecasting.
• Does not expect fraudulent claims to decrease ever again.
• More than 1.6million foreign born nationals are unemployed or economically inactive.
• 55% of homeless people in London are not from the UK.
• Gave £726million in universal credit to refugees in 2023.
• Around 71% of pensioners with a disability and 83% of the over-80s will lose the Winter fuel allowance benefit. Department for Work and Pensions also estimates that 780,000 people entitled to Pension Credit but not claiming it will lose winter fuel payments.

People

• Saorsa Amatheia Tweedale

Twitter

• https://twitter.com/DWPgovuk