Nearly half of voters believe people living with anxiety and depression should be able to claim disability or sickness-related welfare payments.
The public are more likely to support, than oppose, a system which allows those living with such mental health conditions to claim sickness benefits, new polling shows.
But there is also support for a stricter assessment process to determine who should be able to claim, according to the survey.
It comes after a significant rise in benefit claims linked to mental health conditions paid out in recent years.
Successive governments – including the current Labour administration – have proposed raising the bar for out of work sickness benefits (UC health) and disability welfare (personal independence payments, or PIP) to try to slow this rise in claims.
One suggestion proposed, but later dropped by ministers in the face of parliamentary backlash, involved raising the eligibility criteria for PIP so that someone with anxiety would be unlikely to meet the threshold.
But new polling, carried out by Savanta on behalf of The i Paper, suggests the public do not agree with restricting benefits in this way.
A survey of 2,134 adults, conducted in the week before Christmas, found 47 per cent believed someone with anxiety and depression should be eligible for welfare payments.
Thirty-four per cent said they were against this, and 18 per cent did not know.
Support was highest among the youngest cohort with 60 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds backing the policy.
Chris Hopkins, political director at Savanta, said the results showed that public feeling around welfare spending was far more nuanced than politicians sometimes suggest.
“Often the narrative is that the public are, on the whole, against welfare spending for mental health conditions and feel as though too much is currently spent on the area,” he said.
“This polling shows that the issue is perhaps more nuanced, and may also suggest that Labour’s drive to change welfare spending, however well-intentioned, is still likely to be fraught with parliamentary and public opinion challenges.”
The data indicates that there is concern about how stringent welfare checks are, and voters want the Government to do more to help those living with a health condition to remain in work or move into employment.
More adults (36 per cent) believe health benefit assessments are too lenient rather than too strict (25 per cent).
And a majority (56 per cent) think the Government could be doing more to help people into work.
Ministers have repeatedly said they want to bring down the overall spend on welfare by targeting health and disability claims.
After initial attempts to cut disability benefits were shelved, a watered down version of the reforms was approved by MPs and will see tougher checks and lower payments for new claimants of UC Health from next year.
But there are no longer cuts to PIP payments, or tougher eligibility rules, coming in the near future.
Much of the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) efforts since have revolved around a £3.8bn package of employment support to offer tailored Job Centre services for people who struggle to stay in work.
Voters are split over whether spending on working-age benefits is too high or too low overall, the survey showed.
Some 29 per cent said spending on disability and health benefits is too low, compared with 25 per cent who believe it is too high. The rest said they did not know or spending was about right.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts the Government will spend £83.1bn on health and disability benefits this financial year. This figure is due to reach £109bn by 2030-31.
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The rise in new health-related benefit claims is one of the leading drivers behind this increase.
In England and Wales, 1 in 10 working-age adults claim either disability or incapacity benefits – up from 1 in 13 before the Covid-19 pandemic – with more than half linked to mental health or behavioural conditions.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, 1.3 million people claim disability benefits primarily for mental health or behavioural conditions – 44 per cent of all claimants.
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