Disability-related spending is rising, but overall welfare spending is still similar to the level in 2015/16

This chart shows spending on non-pensioner benefits as a share of GDP.
It includes all benefits that are paid to working-age adults (including children's benefits), excluding pensioner benefits and the Covid relief schemes (e.g. furlough). It uses official data for Britain, but presented in a different way than in the official statistics. 

This chart shows that spending on health/disability-related benefits (including things like PIP, incapacity/industrial injury, sickness benefit (in the 1980s), carer benefits and disability-related housing benefits. It shows that disability-related spending has risen over time, reaching almost 3.0%
Notes: Years are labelled as calendar years for ease of presentation, but actually refer to financial years (so '2025' is actually the 2025/26 financial year). This includes a small share of child-focused benefits that are paid to adults above working age (where they are the parent/guardian for a relevant child). The Household Support Fund from 2021/22 is not included in the DWP tables and is therefore not included here, but will make a minimal difference to results (≈0.02% of GDP). Note that following DWP practice, benefits exclude Northern Ireland but the GDP figure is for the UK as a whole (hence the actual share of British GDP is ≈0.12-0.16% higher). 
Sources: DWP Caseload & Expenditure tables 2024, supplemented with Scottish social security forecasts for disability benefits from 2020/21. Data is for Britain only (i.e. excluding Northern Ireland, which falls outside DWP's remit).
Chart: Ben Geiger, 4/9/2024Source: link to DWP Caseload & Expenditure tables 2024Get the dataCreated with Datawrapper