Welfare

This did catch me offguard after a rough night but it certainly deserves at least reading through. It's today's TPA newsletter.

Welfare Hotspots

We kicked things off on Monday with the news that 2.4 million working age Brits (6.5 per cent) were, as of March 2026, receiving universal credit (UC) with no requirement to work, entitling them to an additional UC payment worth up to £429.80 per month, on top of any other benefits they receive. 

In 25 council areas, at least one in ten working age adults hold limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA) status. Blackpool had the highest proportion of their population with LCWRA at 14.1 per cent, compared to an average of 8.3 per cent across the North West.

Our findings showed a big regional divide with Wales, the North East, and North West making up 9 of the top 10 local authorities with the highest rates of LCWRA. By contrast, 8 out of the 10 council areas with the lowest rates are in the South East.

Particularly alarming was that 804,476 people in their 20s and 30s were holding LCWRA status, 4.2 per cent and 5.5 per cent respectively. Indeed, in seven local authorities, the share of 20 to 29 year olds on LCWRA was higher than 60 to 64 year olds, places like West Devon, North Norfolk, Monmouthshire, and Wealden. Check out the full briefing paper here. 

As John O’Connell told the Sun: “These welfare hotspots underline just how severe Britain’s benefits crisis has become. The health element of universal credit is supposed to be for special cases, but now it means millions of working age people are given extra money to sit at home without any requirement to look for work.”

One-in-Five Receiving UC

Of course this was just the tip of the iceberg. On Tuesday, we revealed that one-in-five working age people are now claiming universal credit.

Of those aged between 20 and 64 in England and Wales, 20.3 per cent were receiving universal credit as of May 2026. Again, there were particularly worrying figures for younger age groups as 1.3 million (17 per cent) of those in their 20s and 2 million (23 per cent) in their 30s claimed UC. Together this was 3.3 million people under the age of 40. 

Among those in their 20s, claims for UC reached 33.9 per cent in Blackpool followed by Thanet at 31.6 per cent, and Great Yarmouth and Hartlepool at 30.8 per cent. The picture was even bleaker for those in their 30s as it hit 40.6 per cent in Blackpool, 38.4 per cent in Great Yarmouth, and 38 per cent in Hartlepool. At the other end of the spectrum, council areas in London occupied 8 out of the top ten spots for claims among people aged 60 to 64, with 51 per cent in Tower Hamlets.

In 15 council areas, at least 30 per cent of the working age population received UC while in 54 local authorities, the figures showed that a quarter are claiming. Blackpool topped this list too with 35.2 per cent in receipt in May 2026. 

Speaking to journalists, William Yarwood said: “In some places, dependency on universal credit has become endemic. Generations are being dumped on benefits: written off and condemned to a life of dependency as ministers make it harder for them to find a job. If Andy Burnham was serious about growth in every postcode, he would be making it more affordable to hire young people.” Soon enough he followed up on Talk explaining to Julia Hartley-Brewer which you can watch here.

While some of those who are receiving universal credit are in work, having 20 per cent of the population reliant on benefits is clearly unsustainable.

Young People PIP Surge in Home Counties

Universal credit claims are just part of the problem. 

On Wednesday, more headline-setting analysis from the TPA wonks found a 17.1 per cent increase in working age personal independence payment (PIP) claims between April 2024 and April 2026, with the largest percentage increases among younger claimants. 

The number of 16 to 19-year-olds receiving PIP rose by 22.8 per cent, equivalent to an additional 37,957 claimants, while the number in their twenties increased by 23.6 per cent, or 87,919, the highest rate amongst working age groups. Nigel Farage’s Clacton constituency had the highest proportion of 16 to 19 year olds at 16.3 per cent, while 6 of the top 10 are found in the North West, including Liverpool Walton (15.6 per cent), Wallasey (15.5 per cent), Birkenhead (14.9 per cent), and Bootle (14.8 per cent). For those in their 20s, Isle of Wight East had the highest proportion at 13.4 per cent.

Four of the ten constituencies recording the fastest increases for 16 to 19 year olds were in the South East, despite enjoying some of the strongest educational, earnings and employment prospects in Britain. Another three could be found in the East of England. Kemi Badenoch’s North West Essex came out top (54.7 per cent), along with places like Sussex Weald (54.4 per cent), Chichester (51.2 per cent), and Canterbury (50.8 per cent). See the full findings here.

Shimeon Lee was absolutely right when he spoke to the Daily Mail, questioning whether we’re really witnessing such a substantial deterioration in health or if the criteria for claiming PIP, changes in diagnosis, and the benefits system itself are driving younger people in affluent areas to claim state support: “The explosion of PIP claims in leafy parts of the Home Counties begs the question of whether there are people with sharp elbows gaming the system. Ministers must urgently review eligibility for PIP, ensure support only goes to those truly in need by means-testing, and ease the burden on hard-working taxpayers.”

What’s being claimed for?

A key issue here is what people are being able to claim for. Diving into the data, the TPA team uncovered a massive explosion in claims for autism, mixed anxiety and depressive disorder (MADD), and ADHD. Across parliamentary constituencies in England and Wales, PIP claims for MADD increased by an average of 108.5 per cent between April 2021 and April 2026, while autism claims rose by 136.6 per cent.

Overall, psychiatric disorders accounted for an average of 39 per cent of PIP claims across constituencies, rising to 51.7 per cent in Bristol Central. ADHD, autism and MADD together accounted for more than half of all PIP claims attributed to psychiatric conditions.

Alongside the rise in psychiatric disorders, we found 52,210 are now getting PIP for non-specific back pain, where no specific underlying cause has been identified making symptoms harder to verify independently. The number of claimants with non-specific back pain as their main disabling condition increased by 58.9 per cent in five years.

London had the highest rate in England and Wales, with 2.2 per cent of PIP claimants, or 10,966, compared with 1.3 per cent nationally. Indeed, all ten constituencies with the highest rates were in London. Queen’s Park and Maida Vale topped the table at 4.2 per cent, more than three times the England and Wales average.

Perhaps most shockingly, areas with the greatest concentrations of physically demanding employment actually had lower rates of non-specific back pain claims. Among the quarter of constituencies with the lowest levels of manual and industrial employment, non-specific back pain accounted for 1.55 per cent of PIP claimants compared to 1.17 per cent with the highest.

Anne Strickland was bang on in her assessment that the findings should “set alarm bells ringing about how easily hard-to-verify conditions can qualify for Pip. When claims are highest in areas with the least manual and industrial work, taxpayers are entitled to ask whether the system is being gamed.”

Taking to Talk, John told listeners: “The concerning thing is actually the growth since 2021… it is that rise that’s giving people a sense of ‘hang on, are we really on top of this? Are we really making sure that the eligibility criteria are stringent enough to make sure that people aren’t gaming the system?’”

A nation of taxpayers

Of course, there was only one topic of conversation for this week’s episode of a nation of taxpayers. Shimeon and William joined Duncan Barkes in the TPA studio to discuss the growing cost of Britain’s welfare state, examining the rise in working-age benefit claims, the sharp growth in PIP claims linked to mental health conditions, the parts of the country where dependency is most concentrated, and what these trends mean for taxpayers.

Catch the latest episode of a nation of taxpayers on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or watch now on YouTube.

Not forgetting the cars

Rounding off the week, yesterday we revealed the shocking 79.9 per cent average rise in enhanced mobility PIP claims, giving those who qualify access to the Motability scheme. Over 2 million people.

In case you were wondering, the Motability scheme allows the extra benefit to be exchanged for a far more generous package including a new car on a rolling three year lease, multiple driver insurance, breakdown cover, servicing & MOT, a home charging point for electric vehicles, and an exemption from vehicle excise duty.

And now for something completely different

This week’s blog comes to us from former TPA chairman and ex-treasury economist, Mike Denham. Mike takes a look at recent productivity data from the Office for National Statistics and whether it means good news for taxpayers. Spoiler: not likely.

……

JH: Phew, I was not expecting that much in the TPA newsletter but obviously we must run it … going to put it at OoL and Jstack as well, plus hopefully Julia will link to it later on X. Hoping that makes up for reprinting 90% of today’s newsletter.

Decision time is nearing

First some general principles, then some specifics:

The most serious political delusion in the UK:

First up is the “hold your nose and vote Reform” strategic stance, on the evidence of faux polls from YouGov, Survation and others, whilst the reality is that they, the MSM, both national and regional and the Establishment in general, are putting out this “framing”, which middle-Britain laps up … relying heavily on the second dellusion.

The second delusion is that Reform is somehow “rightwing” and so all “the right” need do is “patch up differences and unite”. The reality is that “the right” which the Establishment are putting out as existing, is really all of us people wanting it all to stop, from the massed invasion pressuring everything from housing to medical services.

There are many current Reform leaners I know on X, ground level folk, good people, and they and we are all putting out exactly the same concerns, though with different angles up front. For example, our corner is behind the raped girls and women.

The third illusion is that the Reform honchos are somehow anything like the ground level voters … they are two completely different things. Farage is a showman, charismatic to middle-class ladies watching tele … the agenda is so simple to see, and it comes down to globalist and mussie money … he gets power and it’s Mahmoud 2.0, through Taqiyya Zia. See Tracy above.

As for Restore … they have to sort out the birthright ethnicity versus ancestral ethnicity question … perfect example:

Screenshot only, not clip

The perfect example of “really British” against “foreign agent” is Mahmoud. What of the Danny Thommo saga? There’s a cynical theory that he is three letter agency, that the whole thing is kabuki theatre, the real issue being legal immigration and massive procreation beyond anything the fractured west can achieve, esp. given the male-female divide, plus vaxxes and food poisoning.

But don’t ignore the fighting age men in boxes, fed, clothed, ready to be used against Britain.

What to do? Sit at home and wait for Danny Thommo and two thou hotheads in balaclavas to do all our fighting, while we hope the crocodile eats us last?

Oh and don’t forget conscription to send youth to the Russian meat mangler.

The 'Guardian' Is Against The Idea...

..but it'd be all for it if the men just called themselves women.

It is not hard to see why ministers are considering converting parts of the women’s prison estate for use by men. While Andy Burnham’s decision to narrow the early-release scheme was born of political necessity, it has made an already acute capacity problem worse.so far. 

That seems to be Bodybag's only talent, so far, everything he touches unravels at speed. Even Starmer didn't disappoint so early into his reign.  

The government is trying to innovate. Last week it was announced that £110m will be spent on creating new cells in existing jails, by converting underused spaces such as storage and laundry areas. Deportations are to be speeded up, if foreign governments can be persuaded to cooperate.

And if they won’t, then we should immediately cut off any aid we give them, plus visa privileges, and send any ambassadorial staff home. 

But nobody believes that these schemes will be enough.

Here it comes, the hidden motive… 

Most women are imprisoned for non-violent offences and pose no threat to public safety. Two out of three have been victims of domestic abuse; one in three have a child under 10. More than a quarter are on remand, so have not even been sentenced. The social and financial costs of locking them up are shockingly high. It is good to see these arguments gaining traction. A landmark review by Jean Corston proposed the replacement of women’s jails with smaller local custodial centres nearly 20 years ago.

Poor weak women shouldn't be expected to face justice like men have to! Typycal... 

But rushing to close a women’s prison, or part of one, in order to free up space for men would be damaging, as experts have pointed out.

Oh! That’s refreshing! 

The single most pressing question is

... just how to stop these psychopaths?

An excerpt from Will Jones at Lord Toby's site, on the latest Net Zero lunacy, a standing joke in the west but fervently believed by the weak of mind and short of real data wokerati:

Labour has launched a Net Zero scheme to transport hot water on barges on the River Thames to heat London homes instead of each home having a gas boiler. The Telegraph has the story.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has earmarked £41 million for a project to launch electric boats that will travel upriver from a power plant in Belvedere, south east London, before pumping water into storage tanks on riverside pontoons.

From here, the water, heated to almost 100 degrees Celsius, would flow through pipes into nearby heat networks, which are systems that supply hot water to multiple buildings from a centralised heat source, rather than each property having its own boiler. The Government has claimed the project could eventually supply up to 650,000 homes.

The scheme, believed to be the first of its kind anywhere in the world, could also serve London landmarks, including the National Theatre, when it launches in 2028.

The Telegraph understands that most of the £41 million funding will go towards extracting waste heat from the Belvedere power plant to warm the water, as well as building four barges. Each barge could hold two million litres of water, equivalent to 80% of the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Clearly a very dark joke upon the people of the land, with no regard for the science of the madcap scheme, nor the eye-watering costs.  Someone in power is most certainly "extracting the micturation" as they wipe us out.  You can just picture the planning meeting coming up with this bollox.

And from the comments thread:

Putting this lunacy together with, say, the performing seal, muderous Mengele-Hancock psychopathy of the "Covid" response and killer vaxxes years ... together with young British boots in the paedo, child trafficking, money-laundering, biolab, meat-mangler horror of the Ukraine and you start to see the diseased minds behind all this.

Or Mind, if we wish to get metaphysical about it.

The sole question is ... how to stop these maniacs, the henchmen, myrmidons and the brainwashed, before we truly are largely destroyed, our remnantvenslaved in perpetuity?

No, Just No!

For the first time ever, we have a British prime minister who studied for an English degree. Not all of his 58 predecessors went to university, but those who did favoured subjects such as history and classics and, more recently, philosophy, politics and economics.

And turned out to be so utterly useless at all those things… 

Yet reading fiction is a fantastic preparation for life, for understanding people and the times through which we live. Novels encourage empathy, they help you to stand in other people’s shoes, to navigate complicated, sometimes conflicting emotions, they entertain and bring joy.

I agree! 

However, there has been a marked decline over recent years in the numbers of children reading for pleasure.

Wonder why? 

In 2025, the educational charity End Sexism in Schools released a report – Manopolies – revealing that 76% of students study An Inspector Calls by JB Priestley for their modern text from a possible 21 modern texts (a play, wonderful as it is, that’s been on one board’s set text list for 39 years). Then a whopping 93% of students study either A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson for their 19th-century novel from nine possible texts (including Charlotte Brontë, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen). Only 5% of students in England and Wales study a female-authored text at GCSE.

Oh, that’s why! Nothing kills the desire to read a book for pleasure as thoroughly as white middle class liberals demanding you read one that ticks an ‘equality’ box. And they think they can encourage kids to do it by forcing them into the curriculum. 

It’s true that there are diverse modern works by inspirational women on the lists of the four exam boards – Kit de Waal, Tanika Gupta, Jeanette Winterson, Malorie Blackman are all offered. The problem is that schools are disincentivised to change the texts they teach as this would involve costs and additional work.

And so, 'The Guardian' decides to ask modern authors to pick books which will 'inspire a lifelong love of reading' and so should be set as school texts. Let's read some of the blurbs to see why, eh, Reader?  

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a blisteringly funny novel on the syllabus? The Trees is a daring satire on racism, generational guilt and cultural complicity, inspired by the lynching of Emmett Till.

Emmet Till is a black man who was lynched in the Deep South of America in 1955, and so bears as much relationship to the lives of modern black children in the UK as Nanook of the North. 

I recommend this play. For a Black working-class London family, it’s a normal weekday – until the teenage son is senselessly stabbed and killed.

Well, it’s gritty and urban, and realistic, but do children want to read about something so familiar to their lives? I thought the point was to ‘walk in someone else’s shoes’? 

This wise, chaotic, gentle, painful, funny, superb novel follows five teens trying to navigate the most difficult year of their lives, while the town’s cool indie kids are battling Stranger Things-sized perils in vignettes at the start of each chapter. It contains some of the truest (and helpful) lines about social anxiety I’ve ever read.

 Great, giving kids 'social anxiety' to read about to ensure more kids believe themselves to be victims. Why the need to ban the internet if the schools are going to spread popular social contagions instead?

In those two exam years, my daughter studied not one female prose writer, not one writer of colour, only four female characters in the entire trio of set texts (if you count Macbeth’s witches as individual characters, which is debatable, oh and a female pig, according to one teacher).

Your daughter has a virtue-signalling fool for a mother - let her read what she needs to without checking it against a politically correct purity test first. Female and black characters don't automatically make a work of literature better just because someone on the Internet said so!

One of the weaknesses of the literary education of this country is that students are not exposed early in life to the valuable literatures of non-European people, particularly Africans.

If they really were valuable, we'd all be able to name one. I can't, can you Reader?  

First kill off brainwashed youth

... in some far off killing fields ...

Interesting whom they’d put out as their sacrificial lamb, their patsy, to start the far away war talk.

Well well well … if it isn’t Jacob himself:

A selection of reactions which came thick and fast:

I'm Sure There Are More Sympathetic Genuine Victims Of Grooming Gangs...

...but yet the ones the left wing media presents are never really too convincing, when you look at them with an eye unjandiced by identity politics ayway:

"It was the thrill of being with a bad boy." Christine was 13 when she began exchanging messages online with someone she believed was a teenage boy. On their first meeting, she discovered he was a grown man 10 years older than herself. He also told her he was involved with gangs and drugs. 

"I always knew, OK, he's probably hurt someone, but in terms of hurting me, I didn't think it would get to that point," she says.

The nihilism and selfishness of a hardened career streetwalker, in a  13 year old.Thanks, diversity!

Over the next few years, he would use Christine to courier drugs, subject her to extreme sexual exploitation, and assault her so violently she feared she might die. Christine is one of four women who have chosen to waive their anonymity and speak publicly to the BBC documentary, Britain's Forgotten Girls, about how they were targeted by criminals when they were children.

And willingly became criminals in their turn. 

The thrill of feeling wanted was also what led Annie, from south-east London, into the clutches of a gang. At first, she says she "felt quite in awe, quite excited to have the attention" of three older boys who wanted to befriend her, even though she knew they were involved in drugs.

All believe the authorities failed to protect them and did not take their allegations seriously.

And naturally, so does 'The Guardian', fully invested in portray these women as helpless victims of men’s misdoings.

The BBC says it has been told that parental neglect is a common misclassification by social workers of sexual assault involving young girls. It’s not clear whether this is because it makes for a smaller workload or because they are untrained in seeing what’s really going on – but perhaps, given that either seems like a huge dereliction of duty, it doesn’t matter.

So invested that they are even prepared to disapprove of social workers! 

What we might call the first officially missed opportunity to help what was estimated to be at least16500 children at risk was the reaction to the national inquiry led by the then deputy children’s commissioner Sue Berelowitz. Those 2013 findings were largely lost in a welter of recriminations and accusations that the report (which found drug gang abuse cut across all demographics) underplayed the role of ethnicity. It was as if the preceding scandal about grooming gangs had used up the media and public’s allowance of sympathy and at the same time set up a popular narrative from which they didn’t want to deviate.

No, it’s not an equivalent, no matter how much you might want to claim that. 

So we have another film documenting another set of wilful, persistent and profound failures of the system to carry out the protective duties it supposedly exists precisely to perform, another film testifying to the perception of girls and women as second-class citizens, as sirens who bring it on themselves, and another frightening look into the moral, social and cultural abyss that shows no signs of closing.

That abyss is one that’s prevalent in the black community and if you ignore the elephant in the room, you’ll never resolve it. 

I feel some sort of rant coming on

Never mind my ramblings, just skip this post and wait for the “real” blogposts. 😎

A good Sunday to y’all … just had the most amazing sleep … had to be getting on for 7 hours. Mixed bag, sleep … finding body aches you never knew you had, heart, joints etc.

Thinking of my folks way back when … their pics are in an old travel case here, plus old gfs and so on. I’m remembering their ageing when it happened, by degrees, that slow deterioration until even writing notes to yourself no longer sufficed. Where was I? Gallivanting around the world again or returning here.

They’d been highly independent and useful, let’s say, my family … we all could repair, build and so on, keep the lawn mown. The initial killer is becoming sedentary, which I’m thinking DAD is not … he has a huge property to attend to at near 90. We do like to have, must have, our own space, our own room to think, to make decisions, without anyone, even family, telling us what to do.

Family and friends call that irascible, cantankerous, brusque perhaps but truth is it takes us longer to think now, even with good food, exercise and a project.

Project is important … nothing worse, methinks, than just going simple in a rocking chair, relying on being attended to. In other words, a certain amount of penury and eking out a living is a good thing … it keeps the machine in its best condition. For example, I have three flights of stairs, someone has to vacuum them, neighbours and I can’t afford to hire someone, we all have vacuums, I have the 25m extension reel.

On the other hand, admins get a thrill from comments

On X, the number of accounts fixated on numbers, traffic, reach is over and above. Think I can safely say that both Julia and I are more fixated on quality of comments ... here are just a few from Ambush Predator, Orphans and Unherdables, for a start.

.....

DAD: No. 11. That was life as children in the 1940s – 50s – 60s. From about the age of 5/6 I would leave the house after breakfast, return for lunch: the off again until supper. My parents knew that I was “Down the fields”. When older I used to cycle for miles and miles. Take a sandwich and be away all day. Ask at any house for water to drink. no problems.

That was life as I knew it, Jim.

Jaded: Never trust people with lots of vowels in their names. If I had a £ every time I dealt with an African who threw themselves to the floor hysterically I'd be a rich man. They are obviously taught that tactic at a young age as a distraction from their dreadful behaviour.

Bill: We all I would argue experience examples of liars lying on a daily basis but we pretend that there is nothing that can be done but go along with "the system" thus putting our innate responsibility to ourselves in a box...in a locker...in a container...at the bottom of the sea where we don't have to face it. That is how "the system" endures . It cannot change it is an inert belief that cannot act, think, speak, listen only you can do those things. You can see things as they are and choose what to do about them. That's personal responsibility.

Bucko: Isn't being a white rapper some kind of cultural appropriation, or something?

Lord T: I used to use facts myself in my job and picking the right facts was critical. I had a book 200% of nothing where the author justified installing street lighting using crime stats and with those same stats proved that installation was not justified. It opened my eyes to a new technique I have used for decades.

Mike Bravo: Swimming is just another form of white supremacy. Blacks invented it but Whitey stole it from them.

Steve: By allowing it (beach launching) the French are in contravention to SOLAS 1974, SAR 1979 and UNCLOS 1982. Using your maritime rescue assets to shepherd an unseaworthy vessel toward a handover point some 12 nautical miles into the busiest sea lane in the world is not providing assistance. It is collusion with human traffickers. Both French and British governments are complicit as evidence exists of radio communications between French Maritime Gendarmerie vessels and H.M. Border Force vessels. A criminal enterprise with joint state sponsorship. That is all.

Tammly: My brother and I went to a Richard Thompson concert at the South Bank a few years back. He started the gig with a vent in the negative about Margaret Thatcher and how horrible she was. This pro Thatcher audience member was not happy. You don't go to a music venue to listen to the political views of the musicians. Although some of the audience were happy with it, I was pissed off by it and have never listened to his music again.

Watchman: Theatre has become the performance space for either tired, repetitive leftist derivative shite lecturing and hectoring the paying audiences, or rewritten, bowdlerised, sanitised and mutilated classics to make them "relevant" and to add a "message" often with frankly laughable DEI castings to show how "inclusive" it is, again insulting the paying public's intelligence.

Discovered Joys: If you look for something hard enough you will find it. Whether it exists or not.

In yer ear: There are clues in a lot of popular song lyrics especially the ones that don’t seem to make sense for example making the supposed subject singing those words look dense or needing to give their heads a good shake. The one above is what came to me when Hancock (M) and his two supporting artists – the “experts” were flim-flamming us about the plandemic. It could also be applied to everything else the pollies deliver.

Doonhamer: Just being crankily pedantic. Everyone supporting a " race " must be " racist ", Shirley?

Bill again: Nobody seems to be asking “Why Piddington?” It's not the only village near a militsry base “destined” for a foreigner accomodation site. Why is this the one chosen to be the darling of the media, the faker, the members of the parliament to rock up at and “discover the real truth”.

Mark the Skint Sailor: There is an impossibility here. There is an impossibility for a completely new, previously unelected and therefore untainted party to win elections in the UK.

John Cheshire: The Ukrainian government headed by Mr (z)Elenskyy is a parasitic organism and to their shame the collective West is constantly feeding the parasite with our money and means of self defence without ever asking for our permission.

Toodles: I can’t go past a weed without pulling it, as well as other various weeds, which after this summer, the summer of goofballs and ‘thorny people weeds’ ambushing me 🫤😑😲🥴, so are the weeds in our yard. Yep, gonna yank a bunch of weeds out! By the roots!

.....

Humblest apologies to the many whose comments are not here, e.g. Penseivat ... your comments are read and noted.

You've Heard Of A Land Grab, Well, Here's A Benefit Grab!

Schools and councils across England are expecting the proportion of children with special needs plans to double to one in 10, with families rushing to secure support before ministers bring in changes  

Support they didn’t already have, so why do they think they need it now? Just because the option to have it is threatened of course.

Headteachers have reported an “unreal” surge in applications for education, health and care plans (EHCPs) mandating support for needs or disabilities such as speech and learning difficulties, autism or ADHD. In 2025, just one in 20 school-age children had EHCPs.

Are we breeding more defective kids, then? Shouldn’t someone be concerned?

No, because that’s not what’s happening at all.This is the effects of social contagion and the attempt to get ahead of the rest of the plebs!

The number of pupils with EHCPs has risen by more than 11% in each of the past two years, and projections by local authorities seen by the Guardian are anticipating similar double-digit annual increases over the next three years. Similar levels nationally would mean just under 10% of all school-age children with an EHCP in 2029.

Clearly an unsustainable rise. 

Such a rapid increase would outstrip the government’s own forecasts and eat into funding for improving specialist support in mainstream schools, undermining its plans for immediate reform while straining school and council budgets.

Georgia Gould, the schools minister overseeing the changes, said the government was carefully considering the responses to its white paper, which aims to give children earlier diagnosis and intervention and moderate the need for EHCPs.

Diagnosis of what, though? Their parents desire to have a ‘special ‘ child for brownie points with the other mum’s and extra accommodation in exams for their spawn?