Benefits paid to working-age people deemed so sick they need help with day-to-day activities are to soar by £10billion in the next five years.
Experts calculate that the total cost of Personal Independence Payments will rocket from the current £17.96billion a year to £28.46billion.
The number of working-age people claiming this benefit is set to rise from 2.4 million to 3.7 million, meaning close to an extra 5,000 people every week could receive the handout.
Department for Work & Pensions projections show that while the average claimant of PIP receives £118 every week, this is expected to rise to £147 in five years.
Critics have called for tighter checks on those who are eligible, to ensure applicants aren’t “nodded through”.
The payments are made to people with long-term physical or mental health issues, regardless of whether they can manage to hold down a job, have huge cash savings or receive any other types of benefits.
They can get the payments if they can show they need help with tasks such as cooking and washing, or are anxious in social situations.
Those who qualify can receive from £95 to £172 per week. The rise in the size of payments for working age people would be more than enough to settle the junior doctors’ dispute which is creating chaos in the NHS.
DWP accountants have said the nation’s total benefit bill is £226billion and is projected to rise to £338billion in five years, an increase of almost 50 per cent.
Professor Len Shackleton, of the Institute of Economic Affairs and University of Buckingham, said: “Nobody would wish to deprive seriously incapacitated people of help but we need to be quite sure that claims related to conditions which are difficult to verify are properly examined by qualified professionals rather than nodded through.”
Former DWP secretary Stephen Crabb said: “We must find better ways to provide welfare support.”
A DWP spokesman said: “Following the Autumn Statement, forecasts for incapacity and disability caseloads have been revised down by nearly £1billion per year. Our changes to the Work Capability Assessment will more than halve the net inflow of people on to the highest tier of benefits, while we invest up to £14.1billion in our health services.”
