More than 100,000 get benefits for ADHD with no need to seek work

Desk report: More than 100,000 people with ADHD are being paid disability benefits without any requirement to look for work, an increase of 40 per cent since Labour came to power.

Official statistics show that the government has approved an average of 40 personal independence payments (Pip) a day over the past two years in which ADHD is cited as the main condition.

The rise, from 71,528 in July 2024 to 100,207 in April this year, is being driven by a surge in the number of young people claiming the benefit. More than half of claimants for the neurodevelopmental condition are aged between 16 and 24, while nearly two thirds of young people cite ADHD, autism, depression or anxiety as their main disability, up from almost half in 2020.

Of all those claiming Pip for ADHD, about four in ten are receiving the top rate of daily living and mobility allowances worth up to £194 a week. This is paid on top of most other benefits and comes with no requirement to look for work.

The figures were released days before Sir Stephen Timms, the disability minister, is due to publish his interim report on the disability welfare system.

His review was set up after Sir Keir Starmer’s attempt to reform the system was blocked by Labour MPs.

Timms has previously suggested that the system could be overhauled to encourage more claimants into work and to control costs. Overall more than four million people now claim Pip and real-terms spending on it is due to rise from £26 billion in 2024-25 to £45 billion by 2031, according to government forecasts. Andy Burnham, the prime minister in waiting, has said he is not “squeamish” about reducing the benefit bill but has warned against “crude” cuts, insisting that he wants to focus on getting more young people into work by making changes to the education system and giving priority to technical education.

He told LBC last week: “Too many young people get to year 10 at school and they can’t see where school is taking them because the system isn’t focusing on those young people.”

On Monday Alan Milburn, the government’s adviser on youth unemployment, said welfare reform was “absolutely necessary”.

He told an event in London organised by the Centre for Social Justice think tank: “You’ve got a huge welfare problem now. The bill is growing … and you’ve got this youth employment catastrophe. You’ve got all of these health issues driving a huge amount of it. It’s driven by anxiety, depression, ADHD and autism. This is a huge change. The number of young people claiming health and disability benefits has doubled in five years.”

Milburn said he had held private discussions with Burnham on the issue and that he was hopeful that the prime minister in waiting was prepared to tackle the problem.He added: “I’m not going to go into what we discussed privately, but everything I’ve seen from Andy publicly suggests that he knows that welfare reform is absolutely necessary.“It’s fundamentally about the life chances of a whole generation of young people. If we think the best option and best opportunity that we can give as a country to a generation of young people is a life on benefits — are we serious?”Joe Shalam, the policy director at the Centre for Social Justice, said any future Labour prime minister should make sure disability benefits allowed people with mental health conditions to be independent.

He said: “We’ve heard from small charities across the UK who are picking up the pieces of a broken health benefit system which is, despite good intentions, facilitating a life on the margins for thousands of people.

“The next PM should tighten eligibility for blunt mental health benefits and instead give people the proper care they need to get on and thrive independently. This is fairer both for taxpayers and for those who today’s Pip system is all too happy to simply write a cheque and leave behind.”

Lord Gove, the former education secretary, told the event that schools needed to be more “rigorous” in their diagnoses of ADHD in children because of its impact on employment later in life.

He said: “At the moment broadly 20 per cent of children are identified as having special educational needs. But that phrase covers a huge variety of conditions.

“There are a growing number of children who are identified with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties. Children who are identified with anxiety and depression. In particular children who are being diagnosed with ADHD.

“In many of those cases, we make excuses and allowances rather than providing support and challenge. And that is particularly acute in the case of ADHD.”