WELFARE cuts are an “entirely false economy” that has likely caused a rise in claims for disability benefits, research found today.

More people are likely to be claiming disability benefits as a result of government cuts to other areas of welfare spending in the last decade, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) concluded.

The think tank calculated that disability benefit spending had increased by £900 million as a result of welfare cuts between 2010 and 2019, finding cuts to non-health-related benefits had led to a rise in claims for health-related welfare.

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, are among the changes which pushed more people towards claiming health-related benefits like the personal independence payment (Pip).

Eduin Latimer, a senior research economist at the IFS and one of the report’s authors, said: “The big picture lesson for policymakers is that changes to one part of the benefit system can shift pressures elsewhere, rather than remove them entirely.”

Iain Porter, of anti-poverty charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which helped to fund the IFS report, said: “Supporting people well during hard times is an investment in their future, their health and the wider economy.

“These findings suggest the recent rise in health-related benefit claims is likely to be partly explained by the sharp drop in real incomes caused by the cost-of-living crisis.

“If people have seen their health decline because they don’t have enough to live on, then blunt cuts are an entirely false economy.”