The Adam Smith Institute has unveiled its new State Dependence Index, revealing that a staggering 52.1% of Britons over 18 years old now rely on the state for their income in some form. That includes 23% on state pensions, 12% receiving universal credit, 11% working in the public sector, and the rest as higher education students or teachers. That’s over 28 million people dependent on the state, marking a 0.8% increase since 2022…
In other words, fewer than 48% of private-sector workers are carrying the burden through taxes. Meanwhile, Reeves’ budget and Rayner’s Employment Rights Bill are hammering businesses, shrinking job vacancies, and pushing more people into state dependence. The ASI’s Sam Bidwell warns the trend will only worsen as Labour “stifles” the private sector. Kemi Badenoch slammed the findings:
“This index is an important contribution to the necessary work of rewiring the state. A culture of dependency has developed that goes beyond welfare to a bureaucratic class with so many talented people working in the unproductive parts of the public sector and working on compliance with government regulations in the private sector. An increasing reliance on state subsidy and regulation is holding back enterprise and growth.”
Labour are pushing their “party of work” message, with their welfare reforms cutting personal income payments for over a million people, yet they’ve offered no real explanation for where the promised £5 billion in savings will come from. Pat McFadden is vowing to cut the bloated civil service, and now the Treasury is briefing Reeves’s Spring Statement will include the biggest spending cuts since austerity, with Whitehall budgets set to shrink by billions more than expected. Though as this latest report shows, state dependence is a far tougher problem to fix…
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”