![\"Tim](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ziplining-6835589.jpg\" "\\"Tim")
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The rise of benefits payments will cost us all, says Tim Newark (Image: Getty)<\/p>\n
Benefit payments will rise by 6.2% this week at twice the rate of inflation, while one in eight parents now say their child has a disability \u2013 double the number since 2015. With benefit claims set to soar, this is a ballooning sum this nation can ill afford.<\/p>\n
Some 1.7 million youngsters are now living with a long-term illness or disability, according to new figures from the Department of Work and Pensions. The biggest leap is in young people being diagnosed with behavioural issues, which is sufficiently vague to defy official government definition, but can include angry outbursts, stubbornness and ignoring adult instructions \u2013 in other words what used to be understood as typically poor behaviour from difficult teenagers.<\/p>\n
In classifying aggression, raised anxiety levels or any other \u2018fashionable\u2019 ill behaviour as a clinical disorder, parents can demand payments from the taxpayer to help their child cope with ordinary life. We\u2019re now witnessing a level of welfare dependency that is becomingly increasingly sought after, and a burden on us all. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that child disability benefit pay-outs will rocket from \u00a35.3billion this year to a staggering \u00a38.3billion in the next decade.<\/p>\n
Read more: ‘Rachel Reeves is making UK poorer \u2013 while helping US and Norway get rich’ <\/a><\/p>\n Read more: ‘Keir Starmer’s dithering over Royal Navy risks rendering it utterly pointless’ <\/a><\/p>\n Roughly 2.8 million adults and children now claim to live with social or behavioural issues that make it difficult for them to cope with day-to-day activities. This has risen by 40% over the past 10 years. No one would begrudge anyone with genuine health problems their necessary payments but as the vagueness of mental health definitions expands so does the opportunity for benefit fraud.<\/p>\n Just last week, 33-year-old Caroline Wieland, of Goring-on-Sea, West Sussex, was given a suspended jail sentence for cheating on Personal Independence Payments (PIP), claiming over \u00a323,000 for anxiety so crippling she said she could not leave her house.<\/p>\n Yet recent holiday photographs caught her zip-lining and surfing in Mexico! While explaining her mental health was so poor she could not cook or wash herself, Wieland made 76 beauty appointments and visited 60 pubs and restaurants.<\/p>\n Everyday fraudsters are playing the system to claim thousands to enhance their lifestyle rather than overcoming a genuine handicap. Last year, PIP overpayments hit \u00a3100million, the equivalent of over 10,000 people fraudulently claiming maximum PIP awards.<\/p>\n