The Department for Work and Pensions said it spent about £22.7 billion on incapacity and disability benefits for working-age people in 2024/25. The government is planning major reforms to Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment, but the official statistics released by DWP do not identify a category of claimants whose condition is recorded as “unknown” or total payments to such claimants in the headline release.

The DWP paid more than £770m in disability benefits last year to claimants whose conditions were recorded as “unknown”, BBC analysis has found. The health secretary Victoria Atkins said that some claims with unclear medical diagnoses were “not acceptable”. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said the “unknown” category was used when a detailed medical reason for a claim was not recorded in the system, and it was working to improve recording practices.

In 2025 to 2026 we will spend £77.1 billion on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions, and £37.3 billion on housing benefits. These statistics are derived from the Department for Work and Pensions’ benefit expenditure and caseload tables, which provide detailed breakdowns by benefit type, recipient group and financial year.

Official statistics for benefit combinations show 24.0 million people claimed some combination of DWP benefits in February 2025. The publication is a broad statistical release on claimant combinations and does not provide evidence for a specific figure of £770 million paid to people whose conditions were recorded as “unknown”.

Around £770m in health benefits went to claimants with no recorded health problem last year, The Telegraph can disclose. The figure relates to 2025 and covers both disability and health benefits where the main disabling condition was coded as “unknown” or the claimant had no diagnosis recorded on the system. The article is based on Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data obtained via official statistics and/or freedom of information requests.

In the main disabling condition classification, code 99 is defined as: "Unknown or claimants without diagnosis on the system". Between March 2020 and October 2020 easements in the processing of new and existing Attendance Allowance claims within DWP led to a large increase in the number of cases being recorded with an unknown Main Disabling Condition. A methodological improvement has been applied for August 2025 data onwards which will remove these inactive cases. As such, users can expect to see a decrease primarily in the Nil and Unknown payment counts.

The BBC reported that by March 2025 about four million people were receiving PIP, and that the rise in claims has been fuelled by an increase in the number of claimants citing mental health conditions. The report discusses the growth in health-related benefits, but it does not state that £770 million was paid for claims recorded as “unknown”.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said there has been a substantial increase in the number of people claiming health-related benefits since the pandemic, and official projections suggest claimant numbers will rise further. The report provides context on the overall rise in health-related benefit claims, but not the specific £770 million figure or an “unknown” category.

In 2025, over £770 million was paid out to benefits claimants based on “unknown” conditions. The majority of these claims were filed via paper rather than in person. Actually that figure was for both disability and health claims, and according to your post that would mean that not one single applicant was dealt with in person, which is totally false. It is also not the biggest cost facing welfare support. Pensions, universal credit and child benefit cost the country more.

In 2024–25, total spending on welfare benefits in Great Britain was £305 billion – more than the Department of Health & Social Care (£204.7 billion) and education (£100.9 billion) combined. Of that Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) spending, around three-fifths goes to pensioners and two-fifths to people of working age and children. Health and disability benefits for working-age people are a significant proportion of this – and of the £140 billion spent on children and working-age people in 2024–25, more than a third (£52.3 billion) went on health and disability payments for working-age adults.

We are now spending more on incapacity and disability benefits (almost £65 billion) than defence – and that figure is set to rise. If 400,000 people currently signed off sick and claiming benefits because of mental health issues were instead in work, this would save the taxpayer around £7 billion a year in reduced benefit payments and increased tax revenue.

The latest projection for 2025-26 (with an adjustment for the Winter Fuel Payment U-turn) is for real spending to be £324 billion, some £44 billion higher than in 2019-20. The second upward pressure on the social security bill is from non-pensioner disability and incapacity benefits, spending on which has risen a concerning £24 billion since 2019-20. This is driven by rising caseloads: 830,000 more families were claiming an incapacity benefit, and 1.4 million more working-age adults were claiming a disability benefit in May 2025 compared to May 2019.

The revelation that more than £770m in disability benefits was disbursed last year where the primary condition was logged as ‘unknown’ has intensified debate over welfare reform. According to figures cited by the BBC, ‘unknown’ now ranks among the larger single categories in DWP’s breakdown of PIP and UC health spending by condition, though the department says this largely reflects coding issues rather than an absence of medical grounds for the awards.

Health-related benefit spending is soaring, with 5,000 people signed off work and onto long-term sickness benefits every day. Working-age health-related benefit caseloads have increased by 1.3 million since the pandemic, with anxiety and depression claims more than trebling since 2019. Spending is now on course to hit 1.9 per cent of GDP by 2030.

Citizens Advice said the Universal Credit Bill would cut the health element for new claimants and that an estimated 730,000 disabled people would lose out by about £3,000 a year on average. This is relevant background on disability-benefit spending, but it does not support the claim about £770 million paid for an “unknown” condition category.

The Centre for Social Justice argued that sickness benefits pay more than a job and proposed tightening eligibility for milder anxiety, depression or ADHD. This is policy commentary on health-related benefits and claimant profiles, not evidence for a £770 million payment total for an “unknown” condition label.

In its response to the BBC’s findings, the Department for Work and Pensions argued that the ‘unknown’ category in disability benefit statistics ‘should not be misinterpreted as money going to people with no identifiable condition’. The department acknowledged that ‘over £770m’ of payments were attached to cases recorded as ‘unknown’ in the latest year, but said this was due to ‘historic data entry practices and coding limitations’ that it is now seeking to address.

CPAG’s welfare reform update discusses planned changes to health-related and disability benefits, including reassessment capacity and related reforms. It offers policy context, but it does not document any official DWP figure of more than £770 million for claimants whose conditions were recorded as “unknown”.

A report on welfare spending noted that ‘recent BBC analysis of Department for Work and Pensions data highlighted that more than £770m in payments for disability-related benefits were associated with claims where the claimant’s health condition was coded as “unknown”.’ The think tank said this raised ‘questions about data quality’ in the disability benefit system, even if it did not in itself indicate fraud or error in award decisions.

Freedom of Information responses from the Department for Work and Pensions have disclosed the amount of benefit expenditure associated with claims where the main disabling condition is coded as "unknown". For recent years, including 2024 and 2025, the FOI data show substantial sums being paid, covering both disability and health benefits. These figures underpin media reporting that hundreds of millions of pounds in benefits were paid to claimants with unknown conditions, although the exact totals and year-specific amounts, such as the reported £770 million for 2025, are not replicated in standard DWP statistical releases.

Background knowledge: In UK disability-benefit statistics, DWP usually classifies conditions into specific categories such as mental health, musculoskeletal, and other groups; an “unknown” condition label is not a standard headline category in the main public releases. Any £770 million figure would likely come from a special tabulation or analysis rather than a routine headline statistic.

In 2024/25 the UK is predicted to spend £313.9 billion on welfare. The amount is also expected to continue to rise. A significant share of this total relates to benefits for disabled people and those with health conditions, including Personal Independence Payment (PIP), Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and other incapacity benefits.