Rachel Reeves MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, responding to the OBR’s Welfare Trends Report, said:

“Today’s OBR report confirms that the Government’s failure to make work pay and their botched implementation of disability benefit reforms are pushing up welfare bills.

“David Cameron’s failure to make work pay is leaving thousands more working people relying on housing benefit and is set to cost taxpayers £12.9 billion. And a failure to help more disabled people into work, alongside the chaos and delays surrounding reforms to disability benefits means that they have overspent by £8 billion on incapacity benefits this Parliament. Overall, their economic failure means that borrowing is now expected to be almost £190 billion more than planned under this government.

“A Labour government will control social security costs by tackling the root causes of rising spending in low pay and a lack of affordable homes. Labour will raise the Minimum Wage, introduce Living Wage contracts and get 200,000 homes built a year by 2020 to tackle the housing benefit bill and ensure working people can make ends meet.”

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