WIREDGOV

Have increases in NHS waiting lists and waiting times contributed to the growing number of  people claiming working-age health-related benefits? 

The number of people claiming health-related benefits in England has risen substantially in recent years, coinciding with a pronounced increase in NHS waiting lists and waiting times. It is sometimes suggested that these two phenomena might be linked.

Yet new analysis published by IFS researchers, utilising newly constructed data at the very local level across England, finds no evidence that rising waiting lists for pre-planned hospital treatment have been a major driver of increases in the receipt of health-related benefits by working-age adults since the start of the pandemic.

Local areas that experienced larger increases in NHS waits for elective hospital treatment between 2019 and 2024 did not, on average, experience meaningfully larger increases in disability or incapacity benefit claims. The same is true for areas that experienced larger increases in waiting times for NHS talking therapies. There are some signs of a possible relationship between NHS waits and disability benefit claims for mental health and musculoskeletal conditions. Taken on face value, these (weak) relationships suggest that longer NHS waits could perhaps explain something like 7% of the national increase in benefit claims for those specific conditions – though even that is very likely an overestimate.

Data limitations make it impossible to establish definitively and conclusively whether longer NHS waits have a causal impact on health-related benefit claims. The analysis comes with caveats. But taken as a whole, the results strongly indicate that deteriorating NHS performance – at least as captured by rising NHS waiting lists for elective hospital treatment or for talking therapies – is to blame, at most, for a small fraction of the overall increase in receipt of health-related benefits among working-age individuals in recent years.

This is the central conclusion of new research published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Max Warner, Senior Research Economist at IFS and an author of the report, said:

‘Our new analysis very strongly suggests that rising NHS waiting lists for elective hospital treatment have not been a major factor behind recent increases in the number of working-age adults receiving benefits for ill health. The main explanation for rising benefit claims almost certainly lies elsewhere. Reducing hospital waiting times is a sensible policy objective, not least as it would benefit those who use the NHS – but we shouldn’t necessarily expect it to also deliver a significant reduction in health-related benefit claims. That’s a separate policy nut to crack.’

Iain Porter, Senior Policy Adviser at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said:

‘Waiting times for treatment and people in need of disability benefits are both indicators that the nation’s health is in need of serious attention. It is clear that the government needs to fully understand what is leading to widespread and persistent physical and mental health problems in order to take the comprehensive action needed. Although conclusions cannot be drawn about the impact of broader NHS services such as primary care, this work suggests that longer waiting times for elective hospital treatment are not the driving factor behind growing need for disability benefits. It’s imperative that we understand and tackle the underlying social and economic causes of poor health.’

The relationship between NHS waiting lists and health-related benefit claims