Stat of the Nation

Jobs Down. Benefits Up. Britain Has a Work Problem

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 06:01:48 GMT

Two sets of official statistics released this week paint a worrying picture.

On one side, Britain is still losing payrolled jobs.

On the other, the number of people on Universal Credit has reached another record.

There are important caveats behind both sets of figures. But put them together and there is a warning Britain shouldn’t ignore.

We need more businesses creating jobs and more people able to move into work. Right now, the numbers are moving in the opposite direction.

Britain Is Still Losing Jobs

Latest HMRC payroll figures published by the Office for National Statistics show there were 30.3 million payrolled employees in July 2026.

That’s 94,000 fewer than a year ago.

Employee numbers were also down another 13,000 on June, although that latest monthly estimate is provisional and may be revised.

The bigger picture is clear enough: payroll employment peaked during 2024 and has subsequently fallen.

And some parts of the economy are being hit much harder than others.

Wholesale and retail employment has fallen by 75,000 in just one year, the largest fall of any major sector.

Hospitality is struggling too. Payrolled employment in accommodation and food services was 2.8% lower than a year earlier, the largest percentage fall among the major sectors.

These are sectors employing millions of people and providing many of the entry-level jobs that help people get into the labour market.

They are also operating against a backdrop of higher employment and operating costs.

And the ONS itself says:

“Feedback from our Vacancy Survey suggests that some firms may not be recruiting because of increases in labour costs and other operating expenses.”

That matters.

Businesses don’t create jobs simply because politicians want them to. If employing someone becomes more expensive while margins are being squeezed elsewhere, firms have an obvious incentive to recruit less, cut hours or reduce headcount.

The jobs machine isn’t firing as it should.

Meanwhile, Universal Credit Hits 8.4 Million

Alongside the latest labour-market figures, the Department for Work and Pensions published its latest Universal Credit statistics.

There are now:

8.4 MILLION people on Universal Credit.

That’s the highest number since the benefit was introduced.

It’s up from 7.7 million a year ago and dramatically higher than the 5.5 million recorded in early 2022.

But this needs some important context.

Simply looking at that increase and concluding that millions more people have suddenly become dependent on benefits would be wrong.

Much of the Rise Has Been People Moving From Old Benefits

Universal Credit has been replacing a range of older benefits.

That process, known as Move to Universal Credit, or managed migration, has transferred large numbers of existing benefit recipients onto UC.

And it explains most of the spectacular increase we’ve seen over the past couple of years.

Between December 2023 and December 2025, the Universal Credit caseload increased by around 2 million people.

Around 1.6 million, roughly 78% of that increase, were people moved onto Universal Credit through managed migration.

That’s an important distinction.

They weren’t 1.6 million completely new people entering the welfare system. Many were already receiving support through Employment and Support Allowance, tax credits, Housing Benefit and other legacy benefits.

But this is where the latest figures get more interesting.

The managed-migration programme is now largely complete.

And since the beginning of this year, the underlying picture has started to change.

Between January and May:

the total UC caseload increased by around 37,000
managed-migration claimants actually fell by around 16,000
other UC claimants increased by around 52,000

In other words, the latest increase is no longer being driven by managed migration.

That’s what we need to watch now.

4.3 Million Have No Work Requirements

Perhaps the most striking number in the latest release is this:

4.3 MILLION Universal Credit claimants are now in the “no work requirements” group.

That’s more than half of everybody on Universal Credit.

By comparison, only around 1.6 million are in the “searching for work” group.

Again, context matters.

“No work requirements” does not mean millions of people simply choosing not to work.

It includes people whom the system does not currently require to look for or prepare for work, including many people with serious health conditions or disabilities and people with caring responsibilities.

And managed migration from health-related legacy benefits explains much of the historic increase.

But once again, look at what’s happening now.

Between January and May 2026, the no-work-requirements group increased by 87,000.

Only 10,000 of that increase came from managed migration.

The remaining 77,000, around 88% of the increase, came from other Universal Credit claimants.

That’s significant.

For years, one of the obvious explanations for the rapidly expanding no-work-requirements population was the transfer of existing ESA recipients.

That explanation is becoming much less relevant to the latest growth.

Fewer Universal Credit Claimants Are Working

Universal Credit is not simply an unemployment benefit.

Millions of people receive it while working because their earnings or household circumstances still make them eligible for support.

But the employment numbers have also weakened.

In April 2025, around 3.2 million Universal Credit claimants were in some form of employment, representing 41.9% of the caseload.

By April 2026 that had fallen to around 3.1 million — 37.7%.

Part of the fall in the percentage is explained by the changing composition of UC as people migrate from health-related benefits.

But the absolute number in employment has fallen too.

And that is happening at exactly the same time as the wider payroll figures show Britain losing employees.

How Has the Nationality Mix Changed?

There is another part of the Universal Credit data worth examining.

DWP nationality statistics show that in April 2026 there were approximately:

574,000 European Economic Area (EEA) nationals, excluding Ireland
526,000 non-EEA nationals

receiving Universal Credit.

The European Economic Area includes EU countries plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Combined, that’s around 1.1 million identifiable EEA or non-EEA nationals on Universal Credit.

A further roughly 188,000 people had no nationality recorded on DWP’s digital systems. We shouldn’t assume those people are foreign nationals, their nationality is simply unknown in this dataset.

The longer-term change among non-EEA nationals is particularly striking.

In April 2022, around 212,000 non-EEA nationals were recorded on Universal Credit.

By April 2026 that had increased to approximately 526,000.

That’s a rise of around 314,000, or 148% in four years.

For comparison, the overall Universal Credit caseload increased by around 50% over roughly the same period.

Nationality is recorded administratively and people’s circumstances can change. Eligibility for Universal Credit also depends on immigration and residency rules, being a foreign national does not automatically give somebody an entitlement to benefits.

But the scale and pace of that increase are still worth examining.

Jobs Down. Benefits Up.

None of these figures in isolation tells us everything about Britain’s economy.

There are legitimate reasons why people receive Universal Credit.

Millions of claimants work.

Much of the huge increase in UC over recent years was an administrative transfer from older benefits rather than new welfare dependency.

And many of those with no work requirements have health conditions, disabilities or caring responsibilities that genuinely prevent them from working.

Those facts matter.

But so does the direction of travel.

The latest data show that:

Britain has 94,000 fewer payrolled employees than a year ago
retail has lost 75,000 payrolled employees
hospitality employment is down 2.8%
a record 8.4 million people are on Universal Credit
4.3 million have no work requirements
the latest growth in that group is overwhelmingly not being driven by managed migration

Britain needs an economy that makes it easier for businesses to create jobs.

And we need a welfare system that supports people who genuinely cannot work, while doing everything reasonably possible to help those who can work into employment.

Jobs down and benefits up isn’t a direction Britain can afford to continue.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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230 People. One Dinghy. And Britain Still Can’t Stop the Boats.

Jamie Jenkins — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 07:00:48 GMT

This week, I joined Mike Graham on to discuss some of the biggest stories behind the headlines — and what the numbers tell us about the state of Britain.

From 230 people arriving in a single Channel dinghy to drought, struggling public services and falling productivity, one question kept coming back:

Are we actually getting enough in return for all the money being spent?

Watch the Full Discussion

Watch my latest Stat of the Nation conversation with Mike Graham below:

230 People. One Dinghy.

The standout number this week was 230.

That is how many people crossed the Channel in a single dinghy — more people than many passenger aircraft carry.

As I said to Mike, boarding a plane takes time even with gates, staff, allocated seats and an organised process.

So how do 230 people gather on a beach, board one vessel and launch towards Britain without being stopped?

That is one of the questions we get into in the full discussion.

More Money. Less Output?

We also discussed the latest public-sector productivity figures.

Productivity remains below where it was before the pandemic, with healthcare performing even worse.

Yet whenever public services struggle, the answer from politicians is usually the same:

Spend more money.

Before taxpayers are asked for even more, shouldn’t we first ask what we are getting from the resources already going in?

That takes us into GP access, online triage and the wider question of whether higher spending is actually delivering better services.

Drought, Water and What We Get for Our Money

Britain is once again talking about drought, despite exceptionally wet weather only months ago.

If hotter and drier summers are going to become more common, where are the reservoirs, water storage and serious plans for adaptation?

And it feeds into the wider theme of this week’s conversation.

Taxes rise.

Council tax rises.

Water bills rise.

Yet many people increasingly feel they are getting less in return.

The debate shouldn’t just be about how much government spends. It should be about what taxpayers actually get for it.

🎥 Watch the full discussion with Mike Graham above — we cover all of this and plenty more.

What do you think? Are Britain’s biggest problems really a lack of money — or are we simply failing to get enough from what we already spend?

Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Britain Is Spending More — But Public Services Are Still Less Productive Than Before Covid

Jamie Jenkins — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 06:00:48 GMT

There is a fairly simple question we should ask whenever politicians announce billions more for public services: what are we actually getting for the money?

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, in 2025, overall UK public-service productivity was still 2.5% below where it was in 2019. For healthcare, it was 5.8% lower.

There has been a recovery since Covid, and that matters. But after five consecutive years of improving productivity, Britain still has not got back to where it was before the pandemic.

That should be a much bigger part of the debate about how we fund the state.

What Does Productivity Actually Mean?

This sounds more complicated than it is. It isn’t a measure of whether individual nurses, teachers or civil servants are working hard enough.

It is essentially asking: how much public service are we getting for the resources going in?

Those resources include staff, buildings, equipment, goods and services. The outputs are things such as hospital treatments, GP appointments and education.

If output rises faster than the resources required to deliver it, productivity improves. If resources rise faster than output, productivity falls.

We spend a lot of time talking about how much government spends. We spend far less time asking what that spending actually delivers.

Why Did Productivity Collapse During Covid?

Covid was an extraordinary shock, but the fall in productivity was also partly the result of choices government made about how to respond.

Schools were closed, non-urgent NHS activity was delayed or cancelled and normal public services were heavily disrupted. At the same time, huge additional resources were poured into the public sector.

In 2020, public-service output fell 7.4%, while inputs increased 9.2%. Healthcare productivity fell 23.0% and education productivity 26.1%.

So this was not simply public-sector workers suddenly becoming less productive. Government deliberately restricted large amounts of normal activity while simultaneously increasing the resources going into the system.

The bigger question now is whether some Covid-era working practices and expectations became embedded. Hybrid working is the obvious example. That does not automatically mean lower productivity, but Covid clearly changed how parts of the public sector operate.

The fall in 2020 is relatively easy to explain. Why productivity is still below 2019 six years later is the more important question.

Five Years of Recovery — And Still Below 2019

Let’s be fair about the figures. Public-service productivity increased by 0.7% in 2024 and another 0.9% in 2025.

In 2025, public-service output increased by 1.7%, while inputs increased by 0.7%. That is exactly what we want to see: more being delivered without resources growing at the same rate.

And 2025 marked the fifth consecutive year of improving productivity following the huge disruption caused by Covid.

So this isn’t a story about productivity currently collapsing. The story is how slowly Britain is recovering what it lost.

After five years of improvement, public-service productivity was still 2.5% below its 2019 level.

Think about that. We aren’t trying to beat some ambitious new benchmark, we are still trying to get back to where we were before Covid.

The NHS Numbers Are Worse

Healthcare is particularly important because it is the biggest part of measured public-service expenditure, and again there has been improvement.

Healthcare productivity increased by 1.1% in 2024 and 1.0% in 2025. Healthcare output rose 2.2% in 2025, compared with a 1.1% increase in inputs.

That is good news. But despite those improvements, healthcare productivity remained 5.8% below its 2019 level.

Nearly six per cent, and remember the comparison. This isn’t the NHS of today being judged against some distant period decades ago. It is being compared with 2019.

That is why I get frustrated when every NHS debate immediately becomes a bidding war over who will spend the most money. Of course funding matters, but surely we also need to ask why a health service receiving enormous resources is still producing less output for those resources than it did before the pandemic.

Simply putting more money in cannot be the only answer.

The Latest Improvement Is Still Small

The ONS has also looked at the latest four quarters, covering April 2025 to March 2026.

Across public services, productivity increased by 0.5%, with output rising 1.7% and inputs increasing 1.2%. Healthcare productivity increased by just 0.4%.

Again, the direction is positive, but the improvement remains modest.

Healthcare output increased by 2.1%, while inputs increased by 1.8%. So more is being delivered, but it is also taking considerably more resource to deliver it.

That leaves only a small productivity gain.

The State Is Not Short of Resources

This is where the wider picture matters, because government spending is already enormous.

Latest Treasury figures show Departmental Expenditure Limit spending reached around £640 billion in 2025/26, up 3.8% in real terms on the previous year. Day-to-day departmental spending alone was almost £497 billion.

Around 6.19 million people were employed in the public sector in March 2026, roughly 37,000 more than a year earlier. Public-sector regular pay was also growing at 5.5%, compared with 2.9% in the private sector, although the timing of NHS pay awards influenced that comparison.

Now, these measures are different. You cannot simply point at higher spending and say it caused weak productivity, it doesn’t work like that.

But we can ask a perfectly reasonable question: if the state keeps consuming more money, employing more people and paying higher wages, when should taxpayers expect a much bigger improvement in what it delivers?

There is a limit to how much more government can tax, borrow and spend without asking whether it is getting enough back.

Stop Confusing Spending With Success

This, for me, is the bigger point.

Success in government is too often measured by how much money has been announced: another £1 billion here, another £5 billion there, more staff, a bigger NHS budget.

But spending is an input, not an achievement.

The achievement is what we get back: more patients treated, shorter waits, better education, faster decisions and public services that work.

The latest ONS figures show some progress, but overall public-service productivity is still 2.5% below 2019, while healthcare remains 5.8% below.

The Covid collapse is relatively easy to explain. The harder question is why, nearly six years later, we still haven’t fully recovered.

Government now needs to focus far more on productivity: cutting bureaucracy, using technology better, reviewing working practices and making sure additional spending actually delivers additional output.

Because there are ultimately only three ways to fund an ever-more-expensive state:

Tax more. Borrow more. Or become more productive.

Britain has spent too long relying on the first two.

Getting back to 2019 should not be considered success. Taxpayers already put an extraordinary amount into the British state — they should expect an extraordinary amount back.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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163,000 Fewer Payrolled Jobs — Burnham Must Reverse Labour’s Tax on Hiring

Jamie Jenkins — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 06:02:25 GMT

Britain is not simply losing jobs. It is losing the jobs that give young people their first chance to work.

A new business survey suggests private-sector firms have reduced staffing for 22 consecutive months, matching the longest sustained downturn recorded during the financial crisis.

Official figures from the Office for National Statistics point in the same direction.

Payrolled employment has fallen from around 30.45 million in June 2024 to 30.28 million in June 2026, approximately 163,000 fewer employees than in the month before Labour entered government.

Labour did not create every weakness in the jobs market. Employment growth was already slowing before the election.

But it inherited a cooling labour market and then increased the cost of employing people.

That was the wrong policy at the wrong time.

Andy Burnham now has an opportunity for a genuine economic reset. He should begin by reversing the Reeves-era policies that made it more expensive for businesses to create jobs.

The ONS Data Confirm the Warning

One business survey does not define the entire labour market.

But official figures show the same broad pattern:

Vacancies have fallen to 712,000, below their pre-pandemic level.
Unemployment is higher than it was a year ago.
Private-sector regular pay growth is just 2.9%.
Accommodation and food services lost 79,000 payrolled employees over the latest year.

This is not another 2008-style employment crash.

But private-sector hiring is weak, vacancies are shrinking and labour-intensive service businesses are shedding staff.

This is the labour-market inheritance Burnham now has to confront.

The First Rung Is Disappearing

Hospitality, retail, leisure and other service industries are often the first rung on the employment ladder.

They give young people and inexperienced workers the chance to learn how to deal with customers, work in a team, handle responsibility and build a CV.

When those jobs disappear, young people face an obvious contradiction.

Employers demand experience, but fewer employers are prepared to offer the first opportunity to gain it.

That can have lasting consequences. A difficult transition from education into employment can damage earnings, confidence and future job prospects for years.

You cannot demand that young people gain experience while taxing the jobs that provide it out of existence.

Reeves Increased the Cost of Hiring

From April 2025, employer National Insurance increased from 13.8% to 15%.

The salary threshold at which employers begin paying it was also cut from £9,100 to £5,000.

Minimum wage increases, pension contributions, energy bills and other costs have added further pressure.

Higher minimum wages can improve incomes for those who remain in work. But ministers must also consider what happens to recruitment, hours and entry-level opportunities.

An employer does not employ a wage rate. They employ a person with a total cost attached.

For a large company, higher costs may encourage automation.

For a local pub, café, hotel or shop, they may mean fewer vacancies, shorter hours or fewer staff.

A higher hourly wage is no victory for the young person who receives zero hours because the job no longer exists.

Burnham’s Reset Must Be Real

Burnham should not defend every Reeves policy simply because it carries a Labour label.

A change of prime minister should mean more than changing ministers and slogans.

The Government should now do three things.

Cut Employer National Insurance for Entry-Level Jobs

Employer National Insurance should be reduced or removed for apprentices, younger workers and genuine new entry-level positions.

The principle is simple:

Government should make it cheaper, not more expensive, for a business to take a chance on somebody without experience.

Restore a Higher National Insurance Threshold

Cutting the threshold from £9,100 to £5,000 brought more lower-paid and part-time jobs into the employer-National-Insurance system.

These are precisely the roles often filled by young people, parents returning to work and people moving off benefits.

The threshold should be raised, particularly for smaller employers and lower-paid jobs.

Put Every Policy Through a Jobs Test

The Government should commit to no further increases in employment taxes during this Parliament.

Every major tax, wage or workplace policy should be tested against one basic question:

Will this make a small business more or less likely to employ one additional person?

The Private Sector Must Generate the Growth

Public services need staff.

But sustainable growth ultimately depends on private businesses creating productive jobs, profits, wages and taxable income.

If private employment and private wage growth weaken, the tax base weakens too.

That creates a destructive cycle:

Higher spending leads to higher taxes. Higher employment taxes weaken hiring. Weaker hiring reduces growth and revenues. The Treasury then demands more tax.

That is not a growth strategy.

It taxes the jobs needed to generate growth.

Stop Taxing the First Job

The labour market is not collapsing, but the warning signs are clear.

Businesses are cutting staffing, vacancies are down and entry-level opportunities are becoming harder to find.

Burnham should not spend billions repairing the consequences of unemployment while preserving the taxes that discourage employment.

The reset should be simple:

Cut the cost of hiring. Protect entry-level jobs. Give small businesses a reason to take a chance on somebody new.

Young people cannot gain experience unless somebody can afford to employ them.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Britain Failed to Build Enough Prisons — So Prisoners Are Released Early

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 06:02:16 GMT

Britain’s adult male prisons are operating at 98% capacity. The consequence is not simply overcrowded jails; sentencing policy is being rewritten around the number of cells available.

From October, some eligible prisoners currently released after 40% or 50% of their sentence could become eligible after one third. Someone handed a three-year standard determinate sentence could therefore have an earliest release point of around one year, with the remainder served under supervision in the community.

Rapists, serious child-sex offenders and grooming offenders have now been excluded. More than 18,000 prisoners serving the most serious sentences, including life and Extended Determinate Sentences, will also remain under the existing arrangements.

That is right, but it does not answer the bigger question: why did Britain allow its prisons to become so full that thousands of other prisoners must leave earlier at all?

This is not justice designed around the sentence. It is sentencing designed around the number of available cells.

Sentences Are Being Changed to Fit the Space

The Government says its new progression model will reward good behaviour. Prisoners who break the rules or behave violently could be held for longer, potentially for their entire sentence.

But the starting point still matters. Some prisoners currently released at 40% or 50% could become eligible after one third, while some currently released after two thirds could become eligible after one half.

The Prime Minister has admitted that he wanted to exclude more offenders but could not do so without risking the prison system “reaching capacity and collapsing”. The Government’s own announcement says more than a decade of inadequate investment has left adult male prisons at 98% capacity.

That is the central issue. Ministers are not principally arguing that every affected offender no longer needs to be in prison; they are saying there is insufficient space to keep them there for as long.

Court sentences should determine the prison capacity Britain needs. Prison capacity should not determine how much of a court sentence is served behind bars.

The Prison Estate Is Filling with Longer Sentences

There were 85,858 prisoners in England and Wales on 30 June 2026, including 70,003 sentenced prisoners. Around seven in ten people serving immediate custodial sentences had been convicted of violence, sexual offences or drug offences.

Compared with June 2025, the number serving sentences of between two and five years rose by around 10%, while those serving five to seven years increased by 7%. At the other end of the scale, the number serving less than six months fell by 22%, with those serving six to 12 months down 16%.

Some of this is straightforward arithmetic. Prisoners serving longer terms remain in the estate for years and accumulate, while people serving only a few months pass through much more quickly.

But the fall in short-sentence prisoners does not necessarily mean fewer lower-level offenders. In some cases, it means people who might previously have gone directly to prison are instead receiving suspended sentences or punishment in the community.

The Sentencing Act creates a presumption that custodial sentences of 12 months or less should be suspended, subject to exceptions including significant risk of harm, breaches of court orders and exceptional circumstances.

Britain is therefore changing the prison population from both directions: releasing some prisoners sooner while sending fewer short-sentence offenders to prison in the first place.

Ministers may argue that tougher community sentences are more effective for some offenders. But the shortage of prison space is plainly helping to determine who enters prison, as well as when others leave.

The Capacity Failure Happened Years Ago

The Government is now building more prison places, and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise. It says 2,900 places have been delivered since July 2024, more than 5,000 are under construction and 14,000 additional places are planned by 2031.

That investment is necessary and overdue. It does not alter the fact that sufficient capacity should have existed before prisons reached 98% occupancy and release rules had to be changed.

The Government says only 500 net places were added to the prison estate over the previous 14 years. New prisons and cells were built, but closures, maintenance and capacity lost elsewhere meant the overall increase was nowhere near enough.

This explains how thousands of new “places” can be announced while the estate remains almost full. Gross construction is not the same as the net increase in usable capacity, and rising prisoner numbers can absorb new places almost as soon as they open.

Britain has not built nothing. It failed over many years to add enough net, usable capacity to create meaningful breathing room.

The current building programme is welcome, but those cells are arriving after the shortage has already forced changes to sentencing.

One Prison Category Has Nearly Doubled

At a time when prisons are 98% full and ministers say other offenders must be released earlier, one category of the sentenced population has risen particularly sharply.

The number serving immediate custodial sentences for public-order offences was 86% higher in June 2026 than in June 2024. The Ministry of Justice says this is likely to reflect the disorder during summer 2024, but public order covers a wide range of conduct.

Some prisoners may have committed serious violence, made threats or caused criminal damage. Others may have been convicted over protest, speech or material published online, which is why the figures do not allow us to assume that every additional prisoner was a violent rioter.

Cases such as Lucy Connolly’s show why the conduct behind each sentence matters. When prison space is this scarce, it is reasonable to ask whether every public-order case resulting in custody represented the best use of a limited cell.

That leaves a legitimate question: why has the state nearly doubled the number imprisoned from this broad offence category at the same time it says prisoners elsewhere must be released early because there are not enough places?

If dangerous offenders committed violence, prison may be entirely justified. But where cases involved speech, protest or online material rather than physical harm, the use of scarce prison capacity deserves far greater scrutiny.

One arm of the justice system increased the number imprisoned from this category. Another brought forward the release of existing prisoners to make room.

The state should explain clearly why these offences have resulted in such a sharp increase in imprisonment while other offenders are being released early.

Early Release Moves the Pressure Elsewhere

Releasing prisoners does not remove the risk or workload. It transfers more responsibility to probation, electronic monitoring and recall enforcement.

There were 13,193 licence recalls between January and March 2026, an increase of 31% compared with the same quarter a year earlier. The Ministry of Justice says early-release schemes increased the number of people on licence and therefore the opportunities for recall.

Not every recall means another offence has been committed. People can be returned to prison for breaching licence conditions, including failing to remain in contact or breaking residence requirements.

But the consequences when release goes badly wrong can be devastating. Liam Matthews was released from HMP Holme House in September 2024 and later that day took part in the fatal attack on 26-year-old Lewis Bell. He was subsequently convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 15 years, followed by three years on extended licence.

One horrific case cannot describe the behaviour of every prisoner released early. It does, however, show why releasing prisoners to create space cannot be treated as a purely administrative exercise; for Lewis Bell and his family, the consequences were permanent.

Foreign Offenders Must Be Removed Where Possible

There were 10,134 foreign nationals in custody on 30 June 2026, including 6,431 sentenced prisoners, 3,283 people held on remand and 420 non-criminal prisoners.

Those groups must not be confused. Someone held on remand has not necessarily been convicted, and not every sentenced foreign national can lawfully or practically be removed.

However, where deportation or transfer abroad is lawful, it should happen quickly. Every avoidable delay occupies a cell that could be needed elsewhere.

The Government says it wants foreign offenders removed faster and in greater numbers. That must become a practical part of relieving pressure on the estate, rather than another review that produces little action.

Build the Cells — And Be Honest About the Policy

The Government is right to accelerate prison construction, but building now does not erase the failure that allowed the estate to reach this point.

Adult male prisons are 98% full. Some prisoners could become eligible for release after one third of their sentence, fewer short custodial sentences will result in immediate imprisonment, and more punishment and risk management will move into the community.

The Government describes this as a sustainable sentencing model. In reality, it has been designed under the immediate constraint of insufficient prison capacity.

Had Britain built enough usable places over the previous decade, ministers would have had far more freedom to decide sentencing policy on its merits. Instead, the Prime Minister has admitted that excluding more offenders could cause the prison system to collapse.

Britain did not fail because no prisons were built. It failed because nowhere near enough capacity was created before the crisis arrived.

Early release creates an empty cell today, but it does not create the prison capacity Britain needs tomorrow.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The Burnham Bounce, Another Social Care Review, and Britain’s Broken Border

Jamie Jenkins — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 06:02:41 GMT

This week, I joined Mike Graham on from the Netherlands to discuss the stories behind the headlines and what the numbers tell us about the state of Britain.

From drought after months of flooding to another review of social care, the same pattern keeps appearing. Britain does not lack political announcements. It lacks delivery.

Watch the Full Discussion

Watch my latest Stat of the Nation conversation with Mike Graham below:

This Week We Discussed

• Why Britain faces water shortages after months of flooding

• Whether the Burnham bounce is real

• Britain’s 22nd social care review in around 30 years

• The falling number of UK millionaires

• Whether Burnham could call an early general election

• Why illegal Channel crossings remain his biggest political test

The Burnham Honeymoon

Andy Burnham has improved Labour’s polling position, but that should not be surprising.

After Keir Starmer’s collapse in popularity, almost any replacement was likely to receive an immediate political honeymoon.

The more important question is where Labour’s support is coming from.

Burnham appears to be winning back people who had moved towards the Greens, Liberal Democrats or the undecided column. There is far less evidence that large numbers of Reform voters are returning to Labour.

For now, much of the media are focused on Burnham’s style, speeches and promises.

The real test will begin when Parliament returns and those promises face proper scrutiny.

Political honeymoons are enjoyable. Then the bill arrives.

Britain Reviews Problems Instead of Fixing Them

Burnham has announced another review of social care.

Britain has already held 22 reviews into the issue over roughly 30 years. Politicians understand the problem, but repeatedly avoid the difficult question of how care should be organised and funded.

A more national system may make sense. Leaving local councils to manage widely different levels of demand has created an inconsistent service.

But a National Care Service would cost billions.

People are also living longer while spending more years in poor health and needing support. There is now a gap of around 20 years between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy.

That places increasing pressure on families, councils, hospitals and care providers.

Another review can describe the crisis. It cannot pay for it.

The same failure can be seen in water infrastructure.

Britain experienced widespread flooding only months ago. Now large parts of the country are facing drought conditions.

We have not completed a major new reservoir for around 30 years, despite substantial population growth and increasing demand.

When it rains, we fail to control the water. When the rain stops, we discover that we did not store enough of it.

That is not simply a weather problem.

It is an infrastructure failure.

Is Britain Reducing Inequality by Becoming Poorer?

Mike and I also discussed estimates suggesting that the number of UK millionaires has fallen by around 7% over the past year.

After adjusting for inflation, the total is reportedly at its lowest level since the financial crisis in 2008.

The figures measure net wealth. Assets such as property and investments are included, but debts such as mortgages are deducted.

Some may welcome fewer millionaires as evidence of reduced inequality.

But Britain does not become more prosperous by losing wealth, investment and successful taxpayers.

Labour may have discovered a quick way to reduce the wealth gap: make everyone poorer.

That is not growth. It is managed decline.

The Border Test

Illegal Channel crossings may ultimately determine whether Burnham can win back voters who have moved to Reform.

People have heard repeated promises about smashing the gangs, improving cooperation with France and reforming the asylum system.

Yet when the weather improves, the boats continue to arrive.

That suggests the weather remains a more effective deterrent than government policy.

Burnham can improve Labour’s presentation. He can speak more naturally than Starmer and offer a more optimistic story about Britain.

But voters will eventually judge him on results.

Can he secure the border?

Can he establish who is entering the country?

Can he improve public services without increasing taxes again?

Can he generate economic growth rather than redistribute a shrinking pool of wealth?

Those are the tests that will determine whether the Burnham bounce becomes a lasting political recovery or another short lived Westminster honeymoon.

The Bottom Line

Andy Burnham has changed the mood around Labour.

He has not yet changed the underlying reality.

Britain still faces failing infrastructure, unresolved social care costs, declining wealth and a border that remains out of control.

The Burnham bounce will last until the promises meet the numbers.

And the numbers eventually win.

Do you think Andy Burnham can deliver real change, or is this just another political honeymoon?

Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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One of the Wettest Winters. Drought by Summer. What Went Wrong?

Jamie Jenkins — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 06:00:54 GMT

Britain has moved from an unusually wet winter to widespread drought in a matter of months.

Rainfall across the UK last winter was 13% above the long term average. England received 42% more rainfall than normal, while Wales received 20% more. England experienced its eighth wettest winter on record, with southern England recording its fourth wettest.

Yet half of England has now officially been declared in drought, while Natural Resources Wales has extended its environmental drought declaration across the whole of Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland are not covered by those declarations, but the situation raises a wider UK question about whether essential infrastructure has kept pace with the country’s growth.

The immediate cause of the drought is clear. July brought exceptionally low rainfall, sustained high temperatures and soaring demand. But extreme weather does not remove the responsibility to prepare for it.

The bigger question is why a country that has added millions of people, built millions of homes and repeatedly warned of growing pressure on water supplies has taken so long to expand the infrastructure needed to support them.

From a Wet Winter to Drought

By the end of February, England’s reservoirs were 94% full, with twelve completely full. River flows were normal or higher at every monitored site, while groundwater levels had risen across most of the country. The winter rainfall provided an important buffer as Britain entered spring.

Then the rain stopped.

By late July, England had received just 7% of its long term average rainfall for the month, falling to only 1% across southern England. Wales had received just 8% of its normal July rainfall, putting the month on course to be the driest July in Wales since records began 190 years ago.

This is a genuine drought with serious consequences. Rivers are exceptionally low, groundwater levels are falling, wildlife is under pressure and farmers face worsening conditions. In England, seven water companies have introduced temporary restrictions covering 23 million customers, around 40% of the population.

However, drought is not only a test of the weather. It is also a test of how much resilience a country has built into its water system.

The Population Grew. Infrastructure Did Not Keep Pace

In 1995, the UK population was just over 58 million. The provisional estimate for 2025 is almost 69.5 million.

That is an increase of approximately 11.5 million people, or nearly 20%, in 30 years.

Every additional household requires a reliable supply of clean water. Every new housing development needs pipes, treatment capacity, local storage and connections to the wider network. Growing towns and cities also place greater pressure on reservoirs, rivers and groundwater.

Yet England has not completed a new major reservoir for more than 30 years. Havant Thicket is expected to become the first around 2030, while water companies have committed to bringing nine new reservoirs into operation by 2050.

The issue is not that nobody knew demand would rise. Population growth was measurable, housing development was planned and concerns about future shortages were repeatedly documented.

Britain increased the number of people relying on the system without expanding strategic capacity at anything close to the same rate. That is not long term planning. It is decades of delayed catch up.

Reservoirs Matter

England’s reservoir storage fell from 94% at the end of February to 75.3% by late July, leaving it around 7.4 percentage points below the seasonal average. Almost half of monitored reservoirs were below normal levels.

The fact that reservoirs were almost full in February does not prove that Britain has sufficient storage. It proves that the wet winter provided a buffer, while the speed at which that buffer was depleted demonstrates why additional capacity matters.

Reservoirs allow a country to capture water during wet periods and use it when rainfall collapses. Not every drop can or should be stored, because rivers, wetlands and groundwater also need replenishing. But after adding more than 11 million people to the population, it is extraordinary that England went more than three decades without completing a major new reservoir.

It is about reservoirs, but it is not only about reservoirs. Britain also needs sufficient treatment capacity, local storage tanks, stronger connections between regions and the ability to move water from areas with greater supplies to those experiencing pressure.

The restrictions affecting around 33,000 properties in west Wales illustrate this wider problem. Dŵr Cymru said its treatment works were operating at maximum capacity, with additional water being moved around the network wherever possible.

That does not make reservoirs less important. It shows that the entire chain matters, from capturing raw water to treating, storing and delivering it.

Bills Have Risen by a Third in Two Years

This lack of resilience would be frustrating enough if households were paying less. They are not.

The national average water bill across England and Wales was £480 in 2024/25. Water UK forecast an average of £603 for 2025/26, followed by £639 for 2026/27. That is an increase of £159 in two years, or around 33%.

The water industry says these increases are helping to fund a £104 billion investment programme between 2025 and 2030. The money is intended to improve supplies, replace ageing infrastructure, reduce pollution and provide greater resilience.

Investment is clearly needed. The question is why households are only now being presented with the bill for decades of insufficient infrastructure.

Why were major reservoirs not built earlier? Why were treatment works not expanded as the population grew? Why were connections between water supply areas not strengthened before shortages and restrictions returned?

Households paid water bills throughout the entire period in which the population increased and infrastructure failed to keep pace. They are now being asked to pay substantially more while also being told to consume less.

Nearly One Litre in Five Is Still Lost

The questions become even harder when leakage is considered.

Nearly 19% of the water supplied in England is lost through leaks. The Environment Agency describes that level as unacceptably high and warns that delays to new supply projects could undermine future resilience.

Leakage can never be eliminated completely. Britain has a vast network of ageing pipes, many buried beneath roads and difficult to inspect or repair. But losing almost one fifth of the supply remains difficult to defend when millions of households face higher bills and restrictions.

Consumers are told to take shorter showers, avoid watering their gardens and stop washing their cars. At the same time, a substantial amount of treated water is lost before reaching anyone’s tap.

Households have a responsibility not to waste water. Water companies have a responsibility not to lose it.

What Are We Paying For?

That is the central question.

The UK population has increased by 11.5 million people in 30 years. England completed no major new reservoir during that period. Nearly 19% of the water supplied in England is still lost through leakage, while average bills across England and Wales have risen by around a third in two years.

Customers are now being asked to finance a vast programme of catch up investment after infrastructure failed to expand alongside the population it was meant to serve.

Some responsibility belongs to the water companies. Some belongs to regulators that approved investment plans and price settlements. Some belongs to successive governments that allowed strategic projects to remain trapped in planning and consultation.

But the failure does not primarily belong to the household using a garden hose.

The public has paid water bills for decades. It is now paying substantially higher bills and being asked to accept restrictions when the system comes under pressure. It is reasonable to ask what level of resilience that money has purchased.

The Bottom Line

The current drought has been caused by exceptionally low rainfall, sustained high temperatures and rising demand. That is not in dispute.

But its consequences have been made worse by a country whose population grew rapidly while essential infrastructure failed to keep pace.

Britain needs more reservoirs, greater treatment capacity, stronger regional connections and faster progress on repairing leaking pipes. These investments should have been delivered alongside population and housing growth, rather than decades later through catch up programmes funded by sharply rising bills.

The weather caused the drought. Population growth increased the pressure. Decades of weak infrastructure planning left the system exposed.

Until that changes, Britain will continue moving from wet winters to summer restrictions while customers are left asking a perfectly reasonable question:

What exactly have we been paying for?

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
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The Burnham Bounce: Who Is Labour Winning Back?

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 06:00:35 GMT

Andy Burnham has changed the political weather.

After more than a year in which Reform UK dominated the opinion polls, Labour is suddenly back in contention. Three pollsters now have the governing party either level with or ahead of Nigel Farage’s party.

The Burnham bounce is real.

But the detail suggests Burnham is mainly persuading people who previously supported Labour to come home. There is far less evidence that he is winning over large numbers of committed Reform voters.

Burnham has begun rebuilding Labour’s old electoral coalition.

He has not yet proved that he can expand it.

Labour Is Back in the Race

The latest polling represents a striking reversal.

More in Common has Labour on 28%, four points ahead of Reform on 24%.

YouGov has the two parties tied on 22%, with the Conservatives close behind.

Survation has Labour on 26%, two points ahead of Reform. Before Starmer announced his resignation, the same pollster had Labour trailing Reform by eight points.

The exact figures vary, as they always do between polling companies. But the direction is consistent.

Labour is rising. Reform’s clear lead has disappeared. The Greens have also lost ground.

This is no longer one unusual poll that can be dismissed as an outlier. Different pollsters, using different methods, are detecting the same movement.

Labour is back in the contest.

Who Is Paying for the Burnham Bounce?

The most interesting question is not simply whether Labour has gained support.

It is where that support could come from under Burnham.

More in Common tested a hypothetical election with Burnham leading Labour. In that scenario, Labour rose six points to 27%, narrowly ahead of Reform on 26%.

The report found that Burnham’s strongest gains came from rebuilding Labour’s support among voters on the centre left:

• 15% of current Liberal Democrat voters said they would switch to Labour
• 14% of current Green voters said they would switch
• A quarter of those who did not know how they would vote chose Labour
• 4% of current Reform voters said they would switch
• 4% of current Conservative voters also moved to Labour

These are not confirmed movements in the latest voting intention polls. They are responses to a hypothetical question about how people would vote with Burnham leading Labour.

But the pattern is still revealing.

Burnham’s greatest strength appears to be among voters who had drifted towards the Greens, Liberal Democrats or indecision. His appeal reaches across the political spectrum, but the evidence suggests only limited movement from Reform and the Conservatives.

This looks less like Burnham constructing a completely new Labour coalition and more like him rebuilding the one Labour has lost.

That is still significant. Labour’s decline under Starmer involved voters moving in several directions. Some went to Reform, some to the Greens and Liberal Democrats, while others became undecided.

Burnham appears capable of bringing parts of that fragmented coalition back together.

But recovering former Labour voters is only the first stage. To build a lasting election winning coalition, he will also need to persuade more of the voters who have moved firmly to Reform or the Conservatives.

He may be repairing Labour’s foundations.

The harder task is building beyond them.

Burnham Is Bigger Than Labour

Burnham’s personal polling is currently much stronger than his party’s.

Asked who would make the better prime minister, 48% choose Burnham, compared with 22% choosing Nigel Farage.

That gives Labour an advantage it did not possess during Starmer’s final months. Burnham can reach voters who had stopped listening to the party.

But it also exposes a potential weakness.

Burnham is significantly more popular than a Labour Party still polling in the twenties.

Voters may like him, prefer him to the alternatives and be prepared to give him a chance without yet being ready to vote Labour.

Personal popularity can lift a party.

It cannot permanently protect that party from unpopular decisions, weak public services or a struggling economy.

For now, Burnham is being judged against an unpopular predecessor and against what voters hope he might become.

Soon he will be judged against his own results.

Every Honeymoon Ends

Burnham is enjoying the easiest period of his premiership.

He is new. He communicates differently from Starmer. Voters are judging his tone and intentions rather than the consequences of his decisions.

That will change.

Announcements are popular. Funding them is harder.

Promising reform is popular. Deciding who pays is harder.

Burnham will eventually face the same pressures that damaged Starmer: weak economic growth, strained public services and voters who demand improvement but resist higher taxes.

For now, the public is giving him a hearing.

But a honeymoon measures hope.

Governing measures delivery.

The Election Gamble

Burnham has ruled out an early general election, and Labour already possesses a working Commons majority of 166.

That majority allows the government to pass legislation, survive rebellions and govern without relying on smaller parties.

An election would put that advantage at risk.

Even after the bounce, Labour remains in the twenties. That may be enough to finish first in a fragmented political system, but it is unlikely to reproduce the overwhelming majority secured in 2024.

Yet if Labour continues rising, the pressure to seek a personal mandate will grow.

Burnham inherited the premiership. He did not lead Labour into government at the last election.

Going to the country would allow him to campaign on his own programme while his personal popularity remains high and before difficult decisions begin eroding the goodwill he currently enjoys.

But it would be an extraordinary gamble.

Burnham could strengthen his personal authority while weakening his government’s position in Parliament. A commanding majority could become a narrow one, a minority administration or a hung parliament.

Go early and risk surrendering a majority most prime ministers could only dream of.

Wait and risk watching the honeymoon fade before asking voters for their verdict.

A Bounce, Not a Verdict

Andy Burnham has already achieved something significant.

Labour is back in contention. Reform’s clear polling lead has disappeared. Voters who had moved towards the Greens, Liberal Democrats or indecision are taking another look.

But Burnham is mainly recovering people Labour had already lost.

The evidence does not yet show that he is winning large numbers of committed Reform voters or constructing a broader electoral coalition.

That is the next test.

For now, voters are judging the promise of his premiership rather than its consequences.

The difficult decisions are still to come.

The Burnham bounce is real.

But it is a honeymoon, not a verdict.

What do you think? Should Burnham use his early popularity to seek his own mandate, or would an early election be a reckless gamble?

Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Britain Is Losing Wealth, And Everyone Will Pay

Jamie Jenkins — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:01:18 GMT

Britain now has fewer real-terms millionaires than at any point since 2008.

The Adam Smith Institute estimates there were around 442,000 sterling millionaires in Britain in 2025, down 7% in a single year.

Some will celebrate that.

They should not.

Britain does not become richer simply by having fewer rich people. Unless those lower down the wealth distribution are becoming better off, a shrinking millionaire population means less real private wealth in the country.

That matters for investment, businesses, jobs and tax revenues.

What Counts as a Millionaire?

The Adam Smith Institute defines a sterling millionaire as an adult UK resident with net wealth of at least £1 million.

That includes property, pensions, savings, investments and business assets, minus debts.

The threshold is measured in constant 2025 prices.

This matters because inflation can create millionaires on paper without making anyone genuinely richer. Someone whose assets rise from £950,000 to £1 million may cross the nominal threshold while losing purchasing power.

The tracker is therefore designed to measure real wealth, not the illusion created by rising prices.

The Lowest Level Since 2008

The Institute estimates that Britain had around 442,000 real-terms sterling millionaires in 2025.

That is:

• 7% lower than in 2024

• The lowest estimated level since 2008

• A reversal of the growth seen during much of the previous decade

The Institute attributes the decline to falling inflation-adjusted asset values, Britain’s low savings rate and the departure of wealthy individuals.

Higher interest rates and weaker asset growth have reduced the real value of some property, pensions and investments.

The report also argues that Labour’s changes to the non-dom regime, high taxation and the threat of further wealth taxes have made Britain less attractive to internationally mobile people.

What the Figures Can Tell Us

The figure of 442,000 is an estimate, not a census.

The Institute begins with total UK household wealth and uses a statistical model, calibrated against the Office for National Statistics Wealth and Assets Survey, to estimate how many people sit above the real £1 million threshold.

The model is better at identifying the direction of change than establishing a precise headcount.

It tells us that the estimated number of real-terms millionaires has fallen sharply.

It does not tell us exactly how much of that fall came from wealthy people leaving Britain.

Some will have dropped below the threshold because their homes, pensions or investments failed to keep pace with inflation.

Others may have taken on more debt.

Fewer people may be crossing upwards into millionaire status.

Some wealthy residents will also have left, while others may have decided not to move here.

The precise balance is uncertain.

The direction is not.

Britain is becoming less successful at creating, attracting and retaining real wealth.

Why This Matters to Everyone

The issue is not whether millionaires deserve special treatment.

It is whether Britain is retaining the people, businesses and capital that support the wider economy.

Britain’s public finances already depend heavily on a relatively small number of high earners. HM Revenue and Customs estimates that the top 1% of Income Tax payers contributed around 29% of Income Tax.

Millionaires and the top 1% are not exactly the same group, but there is considerable overlap between wealth, high earnings, business ownership, investment income and taxable gains.

When wealthy and economically active people leave, the Treasury can lose Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax, dividend tax, stamp duties, business taxes and future Inheritance Tax receipts.

Public spending does not automatically fall when taxpayers leave.

The burden can instead shift towards middle earners through frozen thresholds, higher employment taxes and broader tax rises.

Wealth also provides capital to businesses.

It is invested in companies, shares, pensions, commercial property and start-ups. That supports jobs, innovation and business expansion.

Not every millionaire is an entrepreneur.

But many business founders, investors and senior professionals bring experience, networks and access to capital.

When one of them leaves, Britain may lose more than one taxpayer. It can lose future investment, jobs, business activity and commercial connections.

Fewer Rich People Does Not Mean Less Poverty

A fall in the number of millionaires does not automatically improve the lives of people on low incomes.

It does not guarantee higher wages, more housebuilding, better public services, stronger productivity or lower poverty.

Nor does it prove that wealth has moved downwards.

There is a major difference between reducing inequality by making poorer households richer and reducing inequality by making wealthier households poorer.

Only the first represents genuine progress.

A fall in property or pension wealth after inflation is not redistribution.

It is simply wealth erosion.

Britain Cannot Tax Its Way to Prosperity

British politics spends far more time arguing about how to divide wealth than how to create it.

Each new tax may appear targeted in isolation, but together they affect whether successful and internationally mobile people choose to live, invest and build businesses here.

The abolition of the previous non-dom regime may raise more revenue from those who remain.

It may also encourage some to leave and deter others from arriving.

The final outcome depends on behaviour, not simply the tax rate written on paper.

Capital, talent and businesses are mobile.

Britain cannot assume they will stay regardless of how they are treated.

Conclusion

The fall in Britain’s millionaire population should not be dismissed as a problem only for the rich.

Some of the decline reflects property, pensions and investments failing to keep pace with inflation. Some may reflect weak savings. Some, according to the Adam Smith Institute, reflects wealthy people leaving or choosing not to come here.

The precise balance is uncertain.

The warning is not.

A country that loses investors, entrepreneurs and highly mobile taxpayers risks losing capital, businesses, jobs and tax revenue with them.

Britain does not become richer by having fewer rich people.

It becomes richer by enabling more people to create, earn, save and invest.

Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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This Week with Mike Graham: Burnham in Reverse? Undoing Labour’s Mess

Jamie Jenkins — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 06:01:50 GMT

Every week, I join Mike Graham on the to break down the numbers behind the biggest political and economic stories.

This week, we discussed Andy Burnham’s first days in Downing Street and the speed at which he has started reversing Keir Starmer’s policies. The £3 bus fare cap is going back to £2, the early release of prisoners has been paused, digital ID spending is being redirected and a cut to VAT on electricity has been announced.

Burnham clearly wants to present himself as the man cleaning up Starmer’s mess. But reversing unpopular policies is the easy part. The real challenge is showing that he has a credible plan of his own.

Watch the full discussion below.

Labour Is Reversing Labour

The speed of these reversals tells us plenty about the past two years. Labour introduced these policies, defended them and insisted they were necessary. Now, under a new leader, Labour is rapidly taking them apart.

That may be politically smart, but it raises an obvious question: what was the point of the Starmer government? Changing the person at the top does not erase the record of the party that introduced the policies in the first place.

Burnham may look and sound different, but he still inherits the same economic problems, the same public finances and the same difficult trade-offs.

£45 Back, But Taxes Are Still Rising

The proposed cut to VAT on electricity has been presented as meaningful help for households. The estimated saving is around £45 over six months, which works out at roughly 90 pence a week.

That sounds far less generous when compared with the wider tax burden. By my calculations, the average full time worker is paying around £888 more each year in Income Tax and National Insurance than before Labour entered government.

Much of that increase comes from frozen tax thresholds. As wages rise, more income is taxed, more lower paid workers are pulled into the tax system and more middle earners are dragged into the 40 per cent rate.

Mike and I also discussed the possibility of raising the personal allowance, which has remained frozen at £12,570 since 2021. Increasing it would be welcome, but it would also reduce government revenue at a time when borrowing remains high.

If Burnham raises the threshold, he must be honest about what replaces the lost revenue. Will spending be cut, will borrowing rise or will another tax increase take its place?

The government cannot take hundreds of pounds more through the tax system, return £45 and call it generosity.

Britain’s Bigger Energy Problem

Burnham has also spoken about reversing the deindustrialisation of Britain. That will not happen while British businesses face some of the highest electricity costs in the developed world.

Industrial electricity prices in the UK are around four times those faced by businesses in the United States and are among the highest in Europe. That makes Britain a far less attractive place to manufacture goods, invest in factories or create energy intensive jobs.

A temporary VAT reduction may help households at the margins, but it does nothing to solve the deeper competitiveness problem. If Burnham is serious about rebuilding British industry, he must confront the cost of energy and the policies driving those costs higher.

Without that, talk of reindustrialisation is simply another slogan.

Can Burnham End Rough Sleeping?

We also discussed Burnham’s promise to end rough sleeping across Britain. Nobody disagrees with the ambition, but his record in Greater Manchester deserves scrutiny.

In 2010, the official snapshot recorded around 41 people sleeping rough across Greater Manchester. The figure increased sharply during the following years, reaching around 268 shortly before Burnham became mayor.

Numbers later fell, particularly during the pandemic, when emergency accommodation schemes moved people off the streets. However, over the past four years, rough sleeping in Greater Manchester has been rising again.

Burnham is not personally responsible for every case, but if this is going to become a flagship national promise, voters are entitled to examine what happened in the region he governed for nearly a decade.

A national pledge is less convincing when the recent local trend is moving in the wrong direction.

The Bottom Line

Andy Burnham is undoubtedly a better communicator than Keir Starmer. He speaks more naturally, looks more comfortable in public and appears capable of delivering a speech without every sentence being written down in front of him.

But good presentation is not the same as good government.

So far, Burnham’s programme is largely built around reversing Starmer. That may win him some early applause, but it does not yet amount to a credible economic plan.

Burnham wants the country to believe Labour has changed. For now, it looks more like the same government driving rapidly in reverse.

Watch the full discussion above and let me know what you think.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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£45 Off Your Energy Bill. £888 More in Direct Tax.

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:51:28 GMT

Andy Burnham has begun his premiership with a promise to put money back into people’s pockets.

From 1 October, VAT on domestic electricity will fall from 5 per cent to zero. The government says this will reduce the annual Ofgem price cap by around £45.

Any reduction in household bills is welcome. But this announcement needs to be placed against the wider financial reality facing workers.

The average full time employee is paying around £888 more in Income Tax and National Insurance than in 2024/25.

For every £1 Labour is offering back through the electricity bill, nearly £20 is being taken through direct taxation.

That is the reality behind the giveaway.

The Tax Rise Dwarfs the Energy Saving

Earlier this year, I calculated the effect of frozen Income Tax and National Insurance thresholds on an average full time worker.

Median annual earnings were £37,430 in 2024/25. Based on projected wage growth, that rises to around £40,601 in 2026/27.

Normally, rising wages should leave workers better off. But because tax thresholds have been frozen, a growing share of that income is being pulled into the tax system.

The calculation showed:

• Direct tax in 2024/25: £6,961

• Direct tax in 2026/27: £7,849

• Increase in Income Tax and National Insurance: £888

Against that increase, the government is offering households an annualised £45 reduction in electricity costs.

The difference in scale is enormous. The additional direct tax paid by one average worker is almost twenty times the value of the energy reduction offered to the entire household.

In a household with two average earners, the combined increase in direct tax would be around £1,776. The electricity saving would still apply only once.

This is not a substantial tax cut or a meaningful reversal of the pressure placed on working families.

It is a small amount being handed back after much more has already been taken.

The £45 Headline Is Annualised

The VAT reduction begins on 1 October 2026.

The government says it will reduce the yearly Ofgem price cap by around £45, cost approximately £850 million during 2026/27 and lower Consumer Prices Index inflation by around 0.10 percentage points.

But funding has so far been identified only for the period from October to the end of this financial year. The government has not guaranteed that the VAT reduction will continue beyond March 2027.

If the policy ends then, a household using a typical amount of electricity would save closer to £22 or £23 during the currently funded period. The exact amount would depend on consumption.

So the £45 is not necessarily the cash saving households will receive this financial year.

It is an annualised headline attached to a policy that has not yet been guaranteed for a full year.

Energy Bills Are Still £294 Higher

The current Ofgem price cap for a typical dual fuel household paying by direct debit is £1,862 a year.

When Labour entered government in July 2024, the equivalent cap was £1,568.

That means the current cap is:

• £294 higher than in July 2024

• Almost 19 per cent higher

Even after applying the full £45 annualised VAT reduction, the cap would remain around £249 above the level Labour inherited.

Labour can claim it is reducing one element of the bill. It cannot credibly claim that household energy has become cheaper since it entered office.

The longer term comparison tells the same story:

• 2019: around £1,137

• July 2024: £1,568

• July 2026: £1,862

The international energy crisis caused a huge increase during 2022. Prices later fell from their peak, but they remain far above their pre crisis level and are rising again.

Removing VAT reduces the visible price. It does not increase domestic production, improve energy security or reduce the underlying cost of the energy system.

Burnham Promises to End Rough Sleeping Again

Energy bills were not Burnham’s only opening promise. He has also pledged to tackle homelessness and end long term rough sleeping in England.

It is an admirable objective, but his record in Greater Manchester deserves scrutiny because he made a similar commitment after becoming mayor in 2017.

My calculation, adding together the official snapshot figures for Greater Manchester’s ten local authorities, shows the estimated number of people sleeping rough on a single autumn night was:

• 2010: 41

• 2017: 268

• 2021: 90

• 2025: 197

Burnham can legitimately point to a substantial fall during the early part of his mayoralty. The figure declined from 268 in 2017 to 90 in 2021, which was real progress.

But the pandemic was also important. The national Everyone In programme, emergency accommodation and temporarily available hotel rooms helped produce unusually low rough sleeping figures during 2020 and 2021.

Since that low point, the trend has reversed. By 2025, the Greater Manchester total had risen to 197, more than double the 2021 figure.

It remains below the exceptionally high level Burnham inherited, so it would be unfair to claim that no progress was achieved.

But he promised to eradicate rough sleeping in Greater Manchester.

He did not.

Rough sleeping was reduced. It was not eradicated.

Burnham is now making a similar promise nationally. His record suggests the public should demand measurable milestones, transparent reporting and a clear definition of success.

Promises are easy. The numbers will show whether anything genuinely changes.

Labour’s Old Problems Rearranged

Burnham has presented his arrival as a break with the Starmer government.

There have been significant changes, with John Healey becoming Chancellor, Louise Haigh becoming First Secretary of State and Minister for the Cabinet Office, and Ed Miliband becoming Foreign Secretary.

But the Cabinet still relies heavily on familiar figures from Labour’s existing government.

Shabana Mahmood remains Home Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds remains at Business, Heidi Alexander remains at Transport and Lisa Nandy remains responsible for Culture, Media and Sport.

This is not a government built from outside the political establishment. It is largely the same parliamentary Labour Party, with ministers retained, promoted or moved between departments.

Many served in the government that delivered higher taxes, falling payroll employment, weak growth and declining public confidence.

The decision to bring Burnham back from Greater Manchester suggests Labour did not believe any of the obvious candidates already around the Cabinet table could restore public confidence.

Burnham can present himself as a change from Starmer, but he is not a political outsider. He first entered Parliament in 2001 and previously served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Culture Secretary and Health Secretary.

This is an experienced Labour insider returning to Westminster because those already there were not considered capable of rescuing the government.

A new person is in Number 10. Much of the political operation underneath remains familiar.

The First Test of Burnham’s Government

Burnham wants Britain to believe this is a fresh start, but the first evidence is underwhelming.

A £45 annualised electricity reduction is being offered to workers paying around £888 more in direct tax. The policy begins in October, but it has not been guaranteed beyond March. If it ends then, the benefit during the currently funded period would be closer to £22 or £23.

Energy bills remain almost £300 above the level Labour inherited.

Burnham promised to eradicate rough sleeping in Greater Manchester.

He did not.

Much of the same Labour political class remains in government.

Burnham deserves to be judged fairly. Removing VAT from electricity is better than leaving it in place. Reducing rough sleeping is a worthwhile objective. Changing ministers can sometimes improve a government.

But the scale of what has been announced should not be exaggerated.

A possible £22 or £23 saving will not transform household finances. A promise does not end homelessness. A Cabinet reshuffle does not automatically create competence.

Britain does not need another political relaunch built around announcements that shrink when placed beside the data.

It needs lower taxes, genuinely cheaper energy, measurable reductions in rough sleeping and ministers capable of delivering results.

So far, Labour has changed its leader. It has not yet proved that it has changed direction.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins

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The Government Statistics Cover-Up — Labour Hides Migrant Crime Data

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 06:01:43 GMT

The Government holds detailed statistics showing the nationalities of people convicted of serious crimes in Britain.

The Centre for Migration Control used the Freedom of Information Act to request those figures. When the Ministry of Justice refused, the organisation challenged the decision—and won.

The Information Commissioner ordered the Government to disclose the data.

Rather than accept that ruling, Labour’s Ministry of Justice has launched a legal appeal to prevent publication.

That deserves to be called what it is: a government statistics cover-up.

The Data the Public Has Been Denied

In June 2025, the Centre for Migration Control requested conviction data covering 2018 to 2024, broken down by nationality and detailed offence.

The request included serious categories such as violence, sexual offences, drugs, weapons, theft, robbery and arson.

It would amount to one of the most detailed releases of conviction data by nationality ever published in Britain.

The Ministry of Justice refused.

The Centre for Migration Control complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which enforces freedom of information law.

On 22 June 2026, the Information Commissioner ruled that the Ministry must disclose the information.

Migration Central

Labour government launches legal bid to block publication of migrant crime statistics

The Labour government is heading to court to block the publication of migrant crime statistics…

a month ago · 129 likes · 11 comments · Centre for Migration Control

The Government’s Excuses Were Rejected

The Ministry of Justice relied mainly on two arguments.

First, it claimed that publishing the figures could risk identifying individuals from small statistical groups.

The Information Commissioner rejected that argument.

Official statisticians already have well-established ways of handling small numbers, including suppressing or combining cells where there is a genuine confidentiality risk.

The Ministry also argued that producing the data would cost too much.

That argument was rejected as well.

The Information Commissioner found that the department had not shown that the Freedom of Information cost exemption applied.

The Ministry could have accepted the independent ruling and published the evidence.

Instead, on 17 July 2026, it appealed to the First-tier Tribunal in an attempt to keep the figures hidden.

Why These Statistics Matter

Britain is already having a heated debate about immigration and crime.

But that debate is taking place without a consistent national publication showing convictions by nationality.

Instead, the public sees isolated figures released by individual police forces, campaign groups or newspapers using different definitions and covering different periods.

That is a poor basis for serious analysis.

A proper national publication would allow the public to examine:

How many foreign nationals are convicted each year
Which offences those convictions relate to
How patterns differ between nationalities
Whether convictions are increasing or falling
Whether claims made by politicians and campaigners are supported by the evidence

The figures might confirm some public concerns.

They might disprove others.

Either way, the answer is publication, not secrecy.

The Data Needs Context

Conviction totals alone would not tell us everything.

Countries with larger populations in Britain would normally be expected to record more convictions than countries represented by only a few thousand people.

Age and sex also matter because criminal offending is heavily concentrated among younger men across populations.

Any responsible publication should therefore include clear definitions, appropriate confidentiality controls, information on missing nationality and, where reliable figures exist, population estimates that allow meaningful rates to be calculated.

But these are arguments for publishing the data properly.

They are not arguments for withholding it.

Secrecy simply creates the conditions in which selective claims and misinformation thrive.

These Statistics Should Be Published Routinely

As a former government statistician, I find the Ministry of Justice’s position particularly difficult to defend.

Official statistics exist to serve the public good. They should inform democratic debate, support accountability and allow the public to judge whether government policies are working.

There is clearly substantial public, political and media interest in the relationship between nationality and criminal offending.

These figures should not need to be dragged out of government through repeated Freedom of Information requests.

The Ministry of Justice should establish a regular official statistical publication covering convictions by nationality, supported by:

Consistent definitions
Appropriate confidentiality protections
Breakdowns by age and sex where possible
Population denominators where robust estimates are available
Comparable figures over time
Clear information on data quality and limitations

That would be far better than releasing isolated spreadsheets only after legal pressure.

It would allow journalists, researchers and the public to analyse the evidence consistently. It would also expose exaggerated or misleading claims from every side of the debate.

The proper statistical response is not simply to comply with this one request.

It is to publish the information routinely, transparently and with the context required for responsible interpretation.

Where reliable data exists and there is a clear public need, the presumption should be publication.

Publish the Data

Nobody outside the Ministry of Justice yet knows exactly what the unpublished figures will show.

They may reveal serious disparities between nationalities.

They may show that some claims about migrant crime are overstated.

Either possibility strengthens the case for publication.

If the figures are unremarkable, releasing them would help challenge misinformation.

If they reveal genuine public-safety problems, ministers need to confront them.

Neither outcome justifies secrecy.

These statistics were collected by public institutions using public money.

They do not belong to ministers.

The Ministry of Justice should abandon its appeal, release the requested information and commit to publishing properly contextualised conviction data by nationality on a regular basis.

The Centre for Migration Control requested the data. The Ministry refused. The Information Commissioner ordered its release. Labour responded by going to court.

Whatever the figures eventually reveal, the Government’s effort to keep them hidden is already revealing enough.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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This Week with Mike Graham: Reeves Didn’t Fix the Foundations. She Blew Them Up.

Jamie Jenkins — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 15:04:50 GMT

Every week, I join Mike Graham on the to look at the numbers behind some of the biggest political and economic stories.

This week, we discussed Rachel Reeves’ claim that Labour had “fixed the foundations” of the economy, just as the latest figures showed weak growth, falling payroll employment and continued heavy borrowing.

We also looked at what comes next for Labour, whether Britain can afford even more spending, the cost of energy and the continued decline of the BBC licence fee.

Watch the full discussion below.

Reeves’ Economic Legacy

Rachel Reeves wants her legacy to be one of stability and repaired foundations.

The numbers tell a very different story.

The latest GDP figures showed the economy growing by just 0.1% in May, following a fall in April. Production and construction both declined during the month.

A tenth of one per cent is technically growth. It is not the strong, sustained expansion Britain needs to raise living standards or repair the public finances.

During the discussion, I joked that if Reeves had fixed the foundations of Mike’s studio, the building might have started sinking before the end of the show.

The joke lands because the wider picture is so weak.

In May alone, the public sector borrowed £23.3 billion, while debt-interest costs reached £11.7 billion.

Payroll employment is also down over the past year, while vacancies have continued to fall.

Businesses are facing higher costs, more tax and expensive energy. When that happens, they become more cautious about hiring and investment.

Reeves says she fixed the foundations.

The stronger argument is that she blew them up.

More Spending, More Tax, More of the Same?

Mike and I also discussed what may come next under a new Labour leadership team.

A change of Prime Minister or Chancellor does not guarantee a change in direction.

Whoever takes over will inherit weak growth, high borrowing, rising debt costs and continuing demands for more public spending.

We also discussed calls from Labour MPs to increase foreign aid.

Britain spent more than £13 billion on overseas aid last year, while continuing to borrow heavily at home.

There may be a case for targeted humanitarian help, but politicians demanding a larger budget must explain how they intend to pay for it.

Higher taxes?

Cuts elsewhere?

Or even more borrowing?

There is no free money.

Energy is also central to the growth problem.

Lower energy costs would help households, manufacturers and businesses across the economy. Yet Labour remains more focused on targets than affordability.

Without a genuine change in policy, Britain risks getting the same formula again: more tax, more spending and more debt.

Another 539,000 BBC Licences Lost

The final part of our discussion turned to the BBC.

Another 539,000 television licences disappeared in the latest year, following a fall of around 300,000 the year before.

That reflects a wider change in how people consume news and entertainment.

Audiences now have YouTube, streaming services, podcasts, independent broadcasters and social media.

They can choose what to watch, when to watch it and which voices they trust.

The licence fee was created for a different broadcasting age.

The BBC should have to compete for viewers like everyone else.

If it produces good content, people will watch it. If audiences value it, they can choose to pay for it.

Hundreds of thousands more households are already making a different choice.

The Bottom Line

This week’s discussion came back to one central question.

Has Labour genuinely changed Britain’s economic direction, or has it simply added more tax and borrowing to an already weak model?

Rachel Reeves says she fixed the foundations.

Weak growth, fewer payroll jobs and rising debt costs suggest otherwise.

Watch the full discussion above and let me know what you think.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Britain Is Cancelling the BBC — Another 539,000 Licences Disappear

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 06:01:48 GMT

Another 539,000 television licences disappeared last year, following a fall of more than 300,000 the year before. The decline is not merely continuing; it is accelerating.

Not every missing licence represents somebody deliberately contacting TV Licensing to cancel. Some licences expire because people move home or die. But the wider story is clear: more households are deciding they no longer need or want a television licence, and many are legally arranging their viewing so they do not have to pay it.

The reasons will be familiar to millions of people. They rarely watch scheduled television, their children watch YouTube rather than traditional channels, and they already pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+. They simply do not believe another £180 charge offers them enough value.

The audience has not stopped watching content. It has simply moved on.

Why People Are Cancelling

The BBC still raises around £3.9 billion a year from the licence fee, but the number paying is falling rapidly.

There is a legitimate issue around evasion. Anyone watching live television or using BBC iPlayer is legally required to hold a licence. Yet evasion is only part of the story.

Millions of people now consume television, news and entertainment without watching live channels or using iPlayer. They use streaming services, YouTube, podcasts and social media instead, and may watch hours of content every week without legally needing a television licence.

That is not a loophole. It is consumer choice.

Ask people why they have cancelled and the answers are usually familiar:

They rarely watch the BBC or live television.
Their children mainly watch YouTube and streaming content.
They already pay for several subscriptions.
They do not believe the BBC provides £180 of household value.
They object to funding the BBC simply to watch another broadcaster live.

More people are therefore looking at the licence fee and asking a simple question: what exactly am I paying for?

The Audience Has Moved Online

The licence fee was designed for a world with only a handful of television channels. Families watched programmes when broadcasters chose to show them, while Netflix, YouTube and the modern creator economy did not exist.

That world has gone. People can now choose from thousands of broadcasters, journalists, podcasters, entertainers and independent creators. They decide what to watch, when to watch it and who they trust.

There is also likely to be a generational effect. Older audiences remain more attached to traditional television, while younger viewers are more likely to begin with YouTube, TikTok, podcasts and streaming services.

The annual report does not tell us exactly how much of the decline is caused by older licence holders dying and younger households not replacing them. But the direction is obvious: the habit of automatically buying a television licence when setting up a household is weakening.

The BBC Is Following Its Audience

The BBC understands this. In January 2026, it announced a partnership with YouTube to produce content specifically for the platform.

That is sensible. The BBC should publish wherever audiences choose to watch, develop digital-first programming and compete for younger viewers.

But there is a contradiction. At the same time as the BBC moves onto YouTube, the government is considering whether public-service broadcasters and designated “trustworthy” news organisations should receive greater prominence online.

These proposals are still under consultation, but they should not proceed.

YouTube is not an electronic programme guide with a limited number of channel positions. It is an open platform containing established broadcasters, independent journalists, specialist organisations and millions of individual creators.

The BBC already enters that market with enormous advantages:

Around £3.9 billion in annual licence-fee income.
One of Britain’s most recognisable brands.
National television and radio networks.
Decades of publicly funded archives.
Major production and marketing resources.

It does not also need government-backed prominence over independent competitors.

If the BBC makes content people value, viewers will watch, subscribe and share it. YouTube will then recommend more of it, which is how every other creator builds an audience.

The BBC has every right to enter the race, but it should not expect the government to move the starting line.

Let Audiences Choose

The government argues that promoting trusted news could make reliable information easier to find. But that raises an immediate question: who decides which organisations deserve that status?

Large broadcasters can produce excellent journalism, but they can also make serious mistakes. Being established does not guarantee accuracy, while being independent does not automatically make someone unreliable.

Trust should be earned through evidence, transparency and correcting errors. It should not be granted simply because an organisation already occupies a privileged place in the broadcasting system.

Illegal content should be dealt with under the law, and platforms will continue to enforce their own rules. But lawful journalism and opinion should not be pushed down simply because it comes from outside the established broadcasting system.

People should be free to create lawful content, audiences should be free to decide what they want to watch, and broadcasters should have to earn their attention.

The Licence Fee Is No Longer Fit for Purpose

One response to the decline could be to widen the number of households required to pay.

There have been suggestions that households using Netflix or YouTube could eventually be required to contribute towards the BBC, even if they do not watch live television or use iPlayer.

That would not modernise the licence fee. It would simply expand it.

A household buying Netflix is paying for Netflix, while someone watching an independent creator on YouTube is choosing that creator. It does not follow that either should also be compelled to fund the BBC.

The question should not be how to force departing households back into the payment base. It should be what funding arrangement makes sense in a media market built around choice.

Another 539,000 licences disappeared in a single year, and behind that number are hundreds of thousands of household decisions. Some rarely use the BBC, others have abandoned live television entirely, and many believe the licence offers poor value. Younger audiences are increasingly organising their viewing around streaming and independent creators.

Those decisions are adding up to a national verdict: the licence fee is no longer fit for the media market Britain actually has.

The BBC is right to follow audiences online, but it should compete for their attention rather than receive privileged treatment because it occupied a privileged position in the analogue age.

The public is already voting with its remote control and with its wallet.

The BBC is welcome on YouTube. But it should have to win the click.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Britain Is Broke — So Why Are MPs Demanding More Foreign Aid?

Jamie Jenkins — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:20:52 GMT

Before Andy Burnham has even become prime minister, another major spending demand has arrived. Labour MPs want the Government to begin a return to spending 0.7% of gross national income on overseas aid.

The case will be presented in familiar terms: compassion, leadership and Britain’s responsibility to the wider world.

But there is one question that cannot be avoided:

Where is the money coming from?

Britain is not distributing a comfortable surplus. It is borrowing heavily simply to sustain the state it already has.

In May 2026 alone, the public sector borrowed £23.3 billion, £5.6 billion more than forecast. Debt interest reached £11.7 billion, the highest recorded for any May, while public sector net debt stood at around 95% of GDP.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that Britain’s public finances are on an unsustainable long-term path without major tax rises, spending restraint or much stronger growth.

That is the backdrop to this debate. Britain should help people facing famine, war, persecution and natural disaster. Humanitarian assistance in genuine emergencies can be morally justified.

But morality is not a blank cheque.

Britain Already Spends Billions on Aid

Provisional figures show that the UK spent £13.04 billion on official development assistance in 2025, equivalent to 0.43% of gross national income.

Of that, £2.395 billion was spent inside Britain supporting asylum seekers and refugees during their first year here. That represented 18.3% of the aid budget.

I have no objection to that spending being counted as aid.

If taxpayers are already paying to house, support and process people who have arrived in Britain, they should not then be expected to fund a completely separate overseas budget as though the first cost does not exist.

It is all public money.

Whether it is spent here or abroad, the test should be the same:

Is it necessary?
Is it effective?
Can Britain afford it?

The problem is not that asylum-related spending counts towards the aid budget.

The problem is committing Britain to an arbitrary percentage before deciding whether the programmes themselves are worthwhile.

Supporters argue that a fixed target provides certainty and protects aid from short-term political pressure.

But certainty over the total is not the same as evidence that the spending is effective.

Spending more is not proof that policy is working.

Humanitarian Help Is Not Permanent Subsidy

There are clear cases where British assistance is justified.

Emergency food, medical support, clean water and disaster relief can save lives. Aid may also help contain disease, reduce instability and support displaced people closer to their home countries.

Helping those in genuine, dire need is moral.

But those arguments apply to specific emergencies and specific programmes.

They do not justify an automatic commitment to spend 0.7% of national income every year.

Every programme should have to answer basic questions:

Where is the money going?
Who controls it?
What measurable result will it achieve?
How will waste and fraud be prevented?
Why should British taxpayers fund it?
When will it end?

Compassion should guide decisions.

It should not end scrutiny.

Aid to Major Economies Must Be Explained

Britain still records aid spending associated with major economies such as India, China, Brazil, South Africa and Turkey.

The nature of that spending matters.

Traditional bilateral grants have generally been reduced or phased down. Much of the remaining activity takes the form of development investment, climate finance, research, technical assistance or funding channelled through international institutions.

Some of that may be justified.

Investments may produce a return. Research partnerships may benefit Britain. Other programmes may support security, economic or diplomatic interests.

But a more sophisticated financial instrument should not mean less scrutiny.

The right question is not simply:

Why are we giving aid to India or China?

It is:

Why is this spending classified as aid, why should British taxpayers fund it, and what measurable return or result does Britain receive?

If it is an investment, ministers should publish the expected return.

If it is research, they should explain why it belongs in the aid budget rather than the science budget.

If it is climate finance, they should show what was achieved for each pound.

A nuclear power or space-faring economy may still contain severe poverty.

But that does not automatically mean Britain should finance its development choices.

International Institutions Must Prove Their Value

A significant share of British aid is routed through organisations such as the United Nations and World Bank.

Some of that spending may deliver real value.

But no organisation should receive automatic trust simply because it is large, international and prestigious.

When money is pooled into multinational institutions, Britain may not control the exact projects funded with its contribution.

The chain of accountability becomes longer:

Treasury → international organisation → contractor → national government → local delivery partner

The further the money travels, the harder it becomes to identify who is responsible when something goes wrong.

Audit and anti-fraud systems are necessary.

They are not proof that every programme works.

British funding should therefore depend on:

independently verified results;
transparent procurement;
published administration and consultancy costs;
clear responsibility for failure;
and the ability to suspend or recover funding.

No institution should receive money because ministers need to hit a spending target.

It should receive money because it has proved that the programme works.

Start Every Programme From Zero

The central mistake in aid policy is deciding the total first and then searching for ways to spend it.

That reverses the proper order of government.

Britain should carry out a zero-based review of every aid programme.

Nothing should be assumed to continue.

Each programme should pass five tests.

1. Is It Responding to Genuine and Immediate Need?

Emergency help for famine, war, disaster and disease should remain possible.

2. Does It Advance British Interests?

Aid may be justified where it improves security, supports allies, limits hostile influence or reduces future migration pressures.

3. Can the Recipient Country Fund the Programme Itself?

British support should be exceptional where the recipient has the resources to act but has chosen different priorities.

4. Can Success Be Measured?

Vague claims about “capacity building” or “awareness raising” are not enough.

Government should show what changed, by how much and at what cost.

5. Does the Programme End Automatically?

Every scheme should have a sunset clause.

Funding should expire unless ministers return with evidence that it worked and a clear case for renewal.

That is not hostility to aid.

It is basic financial discipline.

Britain Cannot Spend the Same Pound Twice

The argument for returning to 0.7% too often avoids the trade-offs.

Every extra pound spent on aid must come from one of three places:

higher taxes;
cuts elsewhere;
or more borrowing.

There is no fourth option called “international leadership”.

Britain is already facing enormous financial pressures from an ageing population, the NHS, pensions, defence, housing and social care.

The country cannot promise more in every direction and pretend the money will appear later. The state is already borrowing heavily.

Debt interest is already consuming sums that could otherwise be spent on frontline services.

The answer cannot be another automatic spending target.

Compassion Must Be Matched by Responsibility

Britain should remain capable of helping those in genuine need.

It should respond to humanitarian emergencies, support close allies and fund carefully chosen programmes with measurable results.

But it should not borrow money simply to preserve an image of international generosity.

It should not approve aid-linked spending in major economies without explaining why Britain is funding it and what result is expected.

It should not assume the UN, World Bank or any charity deserves funding without proof.

And it should not measure compassion by how much money ministers manage to spend.

Compassion is not measured by inputs. It is measured by results.

Britain does not have a blank cheque.

Charity may begin at home.

Fiscal responsibility must begin in Downing Street.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Nothing Is Free — Benefits, Borrowing and More

Jamie Jenkins — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 19:54:45 GMT

This week on The Mike Graham Show, we discussed the two-child benefit cap, rising disability claims, Labour’s growing list of “free” promises and why Britain must restore the principle that work should pay.

The welfare state was created as a safety net for people who fell on hard times or genuinely could not support themselves. Increasingly, however, it risks becoming a permanent way of life, while taxpayers and businesses are expected to carry an ever-heavier burden.

Watch the full discussion below.

Free Food, Free Childcare, More Benefits

One of the more extraordinary ideas discussed was a proposed national food service.

A senior adviser linked to Andy Burnham has reportedly floated the creation of around 9,500 state-supported restaurants, providing free meals to families.

We also discussed proposals for more free childcare for people receiving benefits, alongside the removal of the two-child benefit limit.

Close to 450,000 households could receive additional support if the limit is removed, at a cost approaching £3 billion by the end of the Parliament.

Each policy is presented as compassionate and affordable. But taken together, they reveal the same political instinct: identify a problem, create another government programme and send the bill to taxpayers.

Nothing provided by government is actually free. It is funded through higher taxes, more borrowing or less spending elsewhere.

Britain Is Already Borrowing Heavily

This matters because Britain is not starting from a healthy financial position.

Since Rachel Reeves entered the Treasury, the government has borrowed around £274.3 billion. In May alone, approximately £11.7 billion was spent on debt interest.

That is the real backdrop to every new spending promise.

The government is not choosing between spare cash and another benefit. It is choosing whether to tax more, borrow more or squeeze another service.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has already warned that, without reform, Britain’s debt burden could rise dramatically over the coming decades.

That makes the endless language of “free” increasingly detached from reality.

Benefits Must Remain a Safety Net

We also discussed the sharp rise in sickness and disability claims, including claims linked to anxiety, ADHD and other mental-health conditions among younger people.

Those who genuinely cannot work deserve proper support. But the system should not write off people who could work with treatment, training or appropriate help.

A successful welfare system should move people towards independence wherever possible.

That may mean stronger conditions, proper assessments and, where appropriate, requiring people capable of contributing to undertake training, job-search activity or useful community work.

The principle should be simple: work must always pay.

The Taxpayer Cannot Fund Everything

Working people are already being pulled into higher tax bands through frozen thresholds, while businesses face rising employment costs and weaker incentives to invest.

At the same time, Britain’s ageing population will bring higher spending on pensions, healthcare and social care.

That makes it even more important to control working-age welfare spending rather than continuously expanding eligibility.

The state depends on the private economy to fund it. If taxpayers, employers and investors are squeezed too hard, the money eventually runs out.

The Bottom Line

Britain should protect the vulnerable. But compassion cannot mean unlimited spending with no conditions, no reform and no consideration of who pays.

Free food. Free childcare. More benefits. Bigger government.

Politicians can call it free. Taxpayers know better.

Watch my full discussion with Mike Graham above.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The OBR’s Warning - Britain’s Tax & Spend Time Bomb

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 06:01:45 GMT

The Office for Budget Responsibility has delivered a warning Westminster cannot keep dodging.

Britain’s current tax-and-spend model is not sustainable.

That is not a slogan from an opposition party or a newspaper headline. It is the conclusion of the independent body Parliament created to test whether government plans add up.

The warning should not come as a surprise. Borrowing is already running above forecast, debt-interest bills are rising and the tax burden is heading towards post-war highs. In the first two months of this financial year, borrowing reached £46.3 billion — £7.7 billion above the OBR forecast and £8.9 billion higher than the same point last year. May’s debt-interest bill alone was £11.7 billion, the highest for any May on record.

The OBR’s new report is the long-term version of the same problem.

Under current policy settings, almost every scenario it models sees UK debt move onto an unsustainable path.

That does not mean Britain is bankrupt today. It means future governments will eventually be forced into choices that today’s politicians keep avoiding: higher taxes, lower spending elsewhere, later retirement, reformed public services, or some combination of all four.

The longer they wait, the nastier those choices become.

We Are Starting From A Weaker Position Than Most Countries

The UK is not approaching these pressures with low debt and plenty of room to manoeuvre.

The OBR says the UK has experienced one of the largest increases in government debt, as a share of GDP, of any advanced economy over the past two decades. On an internationally comparable basis, UK debt has nearly tripled relative to the size of the economy since 2005.

In 2005, UK debt was close to the advanced-economy average. By 2025, it was 45 percentage points higher.

Against the G7 average, the UK went from being 23 percentage points below in 2005 to 6 points above in 2025.

The UK is entering an ageing era already carrying more debt, paying more interest and with less room to absorb the next shock.

Debt-interest spending has more than doubled as a share of GDP since before the pandemic. At £110 billion in 2025-26, it is now the third-largest area of public spending after health and welfare.

A quick note on the numbers: GDP is the total value of everything the UK economy produces in a year — the country’s overall economic output.
We measure debt, tax and spending as a share of GDP because a £100 billion bill means something very different for a £2 trillion economy than it does for a £5 trillion one. It shows how much of the country’s total economic capacity the state is taking up, and whether the bill is growing faster than the economy that must pay it.

The State Is Growing Faster Than The Economy Can Fund It

The OBR’s baseline scenario starts with public debt stabilising at just under 100% of GDP around 2030-31 — in other words, roughly equal to the value of the entire UK economy in a year.

But from there, the pressure builds.

Primary public spending, excluding debt interest, rises from around 40% of GDP in 2030-31 to almost 49% by 2075-76. Tax receipts remain broadly flat at around 41% of GDP.

That gap is the whole story.

Under current policy assumptions, the UK is projected to maintain commitments that the economy cannot sustainably finance. The primary deficit returns in the 2030s and eventually reaches around 7% of GDP. Add rising debt-interest costs and public sector net debt moves onto an unsustainable path by the late 2040s.

Debt interest alone could eventually reach 12% of GDP.

That means more of the money raised from taxpayers goes towards paying for yesterday’s borrowing, rather than schools, policing, defence, infrastructure or lower taxes.

Health, Pensions And Social Care Are The Main Bill

This is not a fiscal problem created by a few pointless Whitehall schemes.

The biggest pressures are the things people care about most: healthcare, pensions and social care.

By 2075-76, the OBR projects:

Health spending rising from around 8% of GDP to 13%.
State pension spending rising from 5% to around 9% of GDP.
Adult social-care spending rising from 1.2% to 1.8% of GDP.
Defence spending reaching 3.5% of GDP.

Older people are not the problem. People who have worked, paid taxes and National Insurance throughout their lives deserve dignity, healthcare and financial security in retirement.

The problem is that governments have made commitments without being straight about the long-term bill.

Much of the public-sector pension system is unfunded. Unlike a private pension scheme, there is no investment pot built up to meet the full future cost of pensions already promised. Future payments are instead a claim on future taxpayers.

That is not a criticism of public-sector workers. They are entitled to the pensions they were promised.

It is a warning about who ultimately carries the risk: future taxpayers.

Net Zero Is Another Cost The UK Government Has Chosen To Add

The OBR’s baseline is not only about health, pensions and social care.

It also includes the cost of the UK Government’s legally binding commitment to reach net zero by 2050.

The OBR estimates that public-sector investment supporting that transition totals £257 billion between now and 2050, in 2025 prices. That is the Government’s assumed share of a wider £720 billion of economy-wide investment.

At the same time, the transition erodes one of the Treasury’s most dependable tax streams.

The OBR projects net-zero-affected receipts falling from 1.6% of GDP in 2030-31 to 0.5% by 2075-76, largely because fuel-duty revenue is expected to collapse as petrol and diesel vehicles disappear.

As fuel duty declines, the Government is already looking for alternative ways to tax driving.

From April 2028, ministers plan to introduce Electric Vehicle Excise Duty: effectively a mileage charge for electric and plug-in hybrid cars, paid alongside existing Vehicle Excise Duty. The proposed rate is 3p per mile for fully electric cars and 1.5p per mile for plug-in hybrids.

The tax burden on driving is not disappearing. It is being redesigned.

So the Treasury faces two pressures at once:

More public investment to deliver the policy.
Less revenue from fuel duty, requiring new ways to tax motorists.

But it is another major commitment being added while debt is already high, taxes are rising and growth is weak.

The question ministers should answer is simple:

Who pays, how much, and what gets cut or taxed more when the bill arrives?

The Private Sector Cannot Carry Everything

The fundamental point is simple.

When I say the productive economy, I mean the private sector: businesses that employ people, invest, export, innovate and generate the profits, wages and taxes that fund the state.

The money government spends does not appear from nowhere. It comes from businesses making profits, workers earning wages and consumers spending money — or it is borrowed from future taxpayers.

Public services matter. A healthy, educated and secure country needs them.

But every public-sector salary, pension contribution, benefit payment and departmental budget must ultimately be paid for by taxes raised from the private economy, borrowing against future taxes, or stronger growth.

And that private-sector base is under pressure.

When employers face higher labour costs, workers lose more of each pay rise to tax, and investment is delayed, the part of the economy that pays for the state becomes weaker.

The OBR forecasts the tax-to-GDP ratio rising from 37% in 2019-20 to 43% by 2030-31.

Yet rising taxes have not removed the borrowing problem.

That tells us something important.

The issue is not simply that the state has too little money. It is that the state is trying to do too much with an economy that is not growing strongly enough to carry it.

Delay Is The Most Expensive Choice

This is the most important part of the OBR’s report.

To keep debt at roughly 95% of GDP by the end of the projection period, the OBR estimates that the UK would need a permanent fiscal tightening worth 3.8% of GDP from 2031-32 onwards.

That is roughly equivalent to total onshore corporation-tax receipts or the entire education budget in 2030-31.

And that is the cost of acting early.

If action is phased in gradually, the required adjustment rises to around 7% of GDP in the final decade of the projection. If action is delayed until the early 2050s, it reaches around 8% of GDP.

Every political party likes to imply that difficult decisions can be handled later.

The OBR has shown that “later” is not the gentle option.

It is the option that forces bigger tax rises, deeper cuts or harsher reforms onto the next generation.

The Choice Britain Keeps Avoiding

There is no painless answer.

Britain needs faster productivity growth. It needs a welfare and tax system that rewards work. It needs a serious plan for NHS productivity and social care rather than assuming spending can rise forever faster than the economy.

It also needs honesty about pensions, debt and the cost of the commitments governments keep adding.

The OBR has not said Britain is bankrupt today.

It has said the current model is not sustainable.

We cannot keep promising more, taxing more, borrowing more and hoping weak growth will somehow carry the bill.

Reform now is difficult. But leaving it to the next generation will be harder, more expensive and far more unfair.

The numbers do not care about the next election.

And eventually, neither will the markets.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Labour’s Great Admission — They Never Prepared For Power

Jamie Jenkins — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 06:26:50 GMT

Today marks two years since Labour won the 2024 general election and Keir Starmer entered Downing Street.

It was a huge parliamentary victory. Labour won 411 seats and secured the kind of Commons majority most governments can only dream of.

But two years on, Morgan McSweeney, the man who helped build the operation that put Starmer there, has admitted Labour was not properly prepared for what came next.

McSweeney said Labour “didn’t prepare enough” for the world it was entering. It had not had enough conversations at the top of the party about what governing in a changed Britain would mean. Most strikingly, he said Labour “didn’t come in with enough of a theory” about how it would deliver change.

That is a remarkable admission from the architect of Labour’s return to power.

A Landslide In Seats, Not In Support

Labour won 411 seats in 2024. It had an overwhelming parliamentary mandate.

But it did not have an overwhelming popular vote.

Keir Starmer’s Labour received around 9.7 million votes. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour received 10.3 million in 2019.

That means Labour won roughly 560,000 fewer votes under Starmer than it did under Corbyn, despite securing more than twice as many MPs. Turnout also dropped from 67.3% in 2019 to 59.8% in 2024.

Labour’s victory was legitimate. That is how first-past-the-post works: seats determine who governs.

But the nature of the result matters. Labour did not sweep to power because the country was united behind a detailed programme for government. It benefited from Conservative collapse, lower turnout and a fractured right-of-centre vote.

It won office. It did not win a great national wave of enthusiasm.

That made preparation more important, not less.

Winning An Election Is Not The Same As Being Ready To Govern

McSweeney’s explanation is revealing.

For years, Labour had convinced itself that it could not win. The party focused on becoming electable, building the campaign machine and getting voters to believe that power was possible again.

That was understandable. After 2019, Labour needed a route back.

But a party asking the public to hand it the keys to the country has a responsibility to prepare for what comes next.

Winning is only the first test. Governing is the real one.

McSweeney said that by early 2024, while planning for day one in government, he had started to realise they had not done enough to prepare. Labour then got “exposed” early.

That is exactly what happened.

The Winter Fuel Decision Set The Tone

The first major decision of the new government was to remove winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners.

It was politically disastrous and it came to define Labour’s opening months.

McSweeney now admits it was a mistake. He said it “probably speaks to not having enough of a plan”, describing a new team coming in, seeing financial pressure and moving quickly to rein things in.

That is the problem in one sentence.

A government that has done the hard thinking beforehand knows which choices are politically, economically and morally sustainable. A government that has not prepared reacts to the first crisis it sees.

The winter fuel decision looked like that: a Treasury spreadsheet finding the easiest available saving, with too little thought given to the people who would pay the price.

Labour should have entered office with optimism, clarity and an understanding of what voters had just endured.

Instead, it opened by telling the country things would get worse and then targeted pensioners.

Policy By Reaction — And More State Control By Instinct

The same pattern has continued.

Farmers have faced inheritance-tax changes that caused anger across rural Britain. Employers were hit with higher National Insurance costs while businesses were already struggling with weak growth, rising costs and recruitment pressures. Welfare reforms have become trapped in rows, retreats and confusion.

Each policy can be debated individually. That is not the point.

The point is that they have not felt like parts of a coherent national plan.

They have felt like disconnected responses to immediate pressures: the Treasury looking for revenue, ministers responding to a fiscal hole, advisers trying to manage the next political problem.

Yet while Labour says it did not have enough time or preparation to work out how to fix Britain’s biggest problems, it has still found time for significant changes to the relationship between the state and the individual.

Digital ID is one example. The government initially proposed a national digital ID scheme with a compulsory role in proving the right to work. After public and political backlash, it dropped the mandatory element, but the wider digital identity programme remains in development through the GOV.UK App and related public-service systems.

Then there is jury trial.

The government’s courts legislation is designed to reserve jury trials for the most serious cases and move more cases elsewhere in the system to tackle the Crown Court backlog. Ministers argue that reform is necessary. But trial by jury is not a minor administrative detail. It is one of the oldest safeguards between the citizen and the power of the state.

If the state is failing because courts are under-resourced and backlogs have been allowed to build, the answer should not simply be to reduce the protections available to ordinary people.

That is what makes this so troubling.

Labour may not have arrived with a clear plan to improve public services, grow the economy or restore trust. But it has still shown a willingness to reach for more central control and to dilute protections when the state itself struggles to perform.

When a government does not arrive with a settled theory of how it will govern, this is what politics becomes.

A problem appears. A policy is rushed out. The backlash begins. Ministers retreat, reframe or blame somebody else.

Meanwhile, the country still waits for the change it was promised.

Government Is Not A Prize For Westminster Insiders

This is the bigger issue.

Government is not a prize for the people who ran the campaign. It is not an internal project for advisers, strategists, civil servants and the small circle around Number 10.

It exists to serve the public.

That means the pensioner worrying about heating their home. The farmer wondering whether there will be a family business left to pass on. The employer deciding whether they can afford another member of staff. The young person trying to find a first job. The family paying more tax while public services still fail to deliver.

Those people do not care about the internal logic of Westminster.

They care whether their lives are getting better or worse.

McSweeney is right when he says voters are not short of patience. They are short of time. They have spent years being told to wait through stagnant wages, higher bills, rising taxes, strained public services and a political system that repeatedly promises change but rarely delivers it.

They do not need another government explaining why the job is difficult.

They need one that is ready.

And Now Comes Andy Burnham

The danger is that Labour treats the failure of the Starmer years as a communications problem rather than a governing problem.

McSweeney has already backed Andy Burnham’s idea of a “Number 10 North” and argued that too much national decision-making is concentrated in London. There is a fair point underneath that. Britain is too centralised, and too many people making decisions about the country have little understanding of life outside the Westminster bubble.

But moving the postcode of power is not the same as changing how power is used.

Burnham’s answer appears to be more devolution, more intervention and more political control over areas such as housing, welfare, education and local economic policy.

That may sound radical. It may also mean giving the same political class even more authority over the lives of ordinary people.

And that is the question Labour now has to answer.

If Starmer’s government was underprepared, reactive and increasingly willing to extend the reach of the state, why should the public assume the next phase will be better?

It may prove to be more of the same, only bigger.

Two Years On, The Excuse Has Run Out

McSweeney deserves credit for being more honest than most people who have worked at the centre of power.

But his admission should concern every voter.

Labour did not merely inherit a difficult country. Every incoming government inherits problems. The question is whether it has prepared properly to deal with them.

Two years on, the answer appears to be no.

Labour had a plan to win. It built a machine, neutralised internal opposition, took advantage of Conservative collapse and won a huge majority in Parliament.

But it did not arrive with enough preparation for government.

Britain needed a government that understood what had gone wrong, who was being left behind and how to put it right. Instead, it got a government still working out its theory of change after it had already been handed the power to deliver it.

And now, rather than a genuine reset, the country may be asked to accept an even more interventionist version of the same project under Andy Burnham.

That is not leadership.

It is power without preparation — and potentially even more power without accountability.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins

Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Starmer Says His Plan Is Working — The Numbers Say No

Jamie Jenkins — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 05:29:53 GMT

This week on The Mike Graham Show, we looked at Starmer’s claim that his plan is working, the reality behind falling asylum hotel numbers, Britain’s falling wealth and the surge in children referred for mental-health support.

Watch the full discussion below.

Keir Starmer says his plan is working.

But when you look beyond the political messaging, the numbers paint a much less comfortable picture.

Hotels Down, Pressure Moved

The number of asylum seekers in hotels is down by 8,676 since the election.

That sounds like progress, until you look at what has happened elsewhere.

Nearly 7,000 more people have been moved into dispersed accommodation, including communities already struggling with housing shortages and pressure on public services.

The problem has not disappeared. It has been moved.

Small-boat arrivals are down on last year, but nearly 12,000 people have still crossed the Channel so far in 2026.

That is not a secure border. It is simply a lower number compared with an exceptionally high one last year.

With thousands still waiting in northern France, and weather playing such a major role in crossings, there is no room for complacency.

Britain’s Wealth Has Fallen

Average wealth per adult in the UK is down 23% since 2020, one of the worst performances across the developed world.

That is not just a number for the wealthy. It feeds through into what people feel in their own lives, higher mortgage costs, more expensive borrowing, inflation eating into savings and pensions, and household debt becoming harder to manage.

Britain has a high share of wealth tied up in property rather than financial assets. That leaves households especially exposed when inflation rises and interest rates climb.

It is also why wealth taxes may sound simple in theory, but become much harder in practice when so much of people’s wealth is tied up in bricks and mortar rather than cash sitting in an account.

One Million Children Referred

More than one million children under 18 now have an active referral to mental-health support.

That number has doubled since 2019.

Children with serious mental-health needs should get support, without question. But we also need to ask what has changed in our society when referrals have risen so sharply in such a short period.

We need to support children who are genuinely struggling, while also helping them build confidence, resilience and the ability to cope with life’s inevitable setbacks.

Changing The Numbers Is Not Fixing The Problem

This is the wider problem with the political debate.

Hotel numbers can fall while pressure is pushed into local communities.

Small-boat arrivals can be lower than last year while thousands still cross the Channel.

The government can say the economy is stabilising while average wealth has fallen sharply.

And we can say we care about children’s mental health without asking why the number needing help has doubled.

Watch the full discussion with Mike Graham above.

Thanks for reading Stat of the Nation.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The Snowflake Generation, One Million Children Referred For Mental Health Support

Jamie Jenkins — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:59:46 GMT

More than one million children in England had an active referral to mental-health services in 2024–25.

1,048,965 under-18s had been referred, were waiting or were receiving treatment through Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services during the year. It does not mean one million children received a new diagnosis in a single year.

But it is still an extraordinary figure.

The Children’s Commissioner says the total has risen from 563,639 in 2018–19 to more than one million today, although the earlier and later figures are not perfectly identical measures because the reporting methodology has changed.

Whatever caveat we attach, the direction is clear.

More children are reaching mental-health services. More are waiting. And too many are staying in the system for far too long.

Of course, some children need specialist help. Mental illness is real. Anxiety, depression, trauma, eating disorders and neurodevelopmental conditions cannot be wished away with a lecture about “toughening up”.

Children who need help should get it quickly, properly and without being left on a waiting list for months or years.

But we also need to ask a harder question.

Have we become too quick to treat some ordinary difficulties, disappointments and anxious periods in childhood as problems requiring a clinical pathway, rather than first helping children build confidence, coping skills and resilience?

Because one in ten children entering mental-health services is not only an NHS capacity problem.

It is a question about the culture we are building around childhood.

The Numbers Are Going In The Wrong Direction

The latest Children’s Commissioner report makes clear how stretched the system has become:

1,048,965 children had an active referral in 2024–25.
That was up from 958,192 the previous year.
35% of children with an active referral were still waiting for treatment at year-end.
More than 60,000 had already waited over two years.

That is unacceptable.

The NHS needs the capacity to support children with serious mental-health needs. But more appointments, referrals and assessments cannot be the whole answer.

We should also be asking why so many children are reaching the point where a clinical service is becoming the place they turn.

Support Is Not The Same As Protection

We are creating a snowflake generation.

That does not mean every young person is weak, lazy or incapable. Plenty are working hard, dealing with real pressures and trying to build a future in difficult circumstances.

But as a culture, we have become far too frightened of upsetting children.

Parents worry about saying the wrong thing. Teachers worry about giving honest feedback. Schools worry about being too demanding. Clubs worry about competition. Institutions worry that standards, consequences or disappointment might damage a child’s confidence.

The result is that too many children are being protected from the very experiences that help them grow.

They are protected from losing. Protected from criticism. Protected from being told they could do better. Protected from failure. Protected from the uncomfortable truth that effort does not always produce an immediate reward, and that sometimes someone else will simply be better.

That is not kindness. It is not compassion. It is a failure to prepare young people for real life.

Adult life does not offer a safe space from rejection, pressure, competition or disappointment. There are job interviews you do not get, promotions you miss out on, homes you cannot afford, relationships that end and moments where someone tells you that your work is not good enough.

Children need support through those experiences. But they also need to experience them. Because confidence is not built by being told you are brilliant at everything. It is built by struggling, improving, failing, getting back up and realising you can cope.

Prevention Is Better Than Cure

If one in ten children is now entering mental-health services, we should not only ask whether the NHS has enough clinicians.

We should ask what is happening before a child ever reaches a referral form.

Parents are not expected to be therapists. Teachers are not expected to solve every family problem. Sports coaches cannot replace a stable home or a functioning health service.

But children do not grow up in NHS waiting rooms. They grow up in families, schools, friendship groups, clubs and communities. Those are the places where resilience should begin.

A child anxious before an exam may need reassurance, perspective and help preparing. A child disappointed after not being selected may need encouragement to improve and try again. A child struggling socially may need help to build confidence and connection, alongside specialist assessment where that is genuinely needed.

Some children will need therapy, assessment, medication or safeguarding support. That is exactly what the NHS must provide.

But prevention means doing more before distress becomes crisis and before a clinical referral becomes the only route to help.

If more than one million children are being routed into mental-health services, something is not working in the support systems around childhood.

Children need adults who listen.

But they also need adults who set boundaries, give perspective, expect effort, encourage independence and teach them that difficult feelings can be faced rather than feared.

Inclusion Should Not Mean Removing Competition

Sport is one of the clearest examples.

Every child should have the chance to take part. Every child should be encouraged. Every child should feel included and valued.

But inclusion should not mean pretending performance does not matter, that everyone is equally good at everything, or that no child should ever experience losing.

Sport teaches children that hard work can improve performance. It teaches teamwork, discipline, responsibility and commitment. It teaches that you can lose one week and come back stronger the next.

It teaches that somebody else may be better than you today, but that you can still improve tomorrow.

That is not harsh. It is healthy. Life is competitive whether we like it or not.

There is competition for jobs, homes, university places, promotions, clients, contracts and opportunities. There are standards to meet, deadlines to hit, difficult feedback to absorb and moments when somebody will tell you that you need to do better.

If children are never taught how to handle losing, criticism or not being the best, what do we expect when they enter adult life?

We should not be raising children to fear challenge. We should be raising them to meet it.

This Does Not End At 18

The consequences do not disappear when a child leaves school.

If we are creating young people who are less able to cope with criticism, pressure, competition, disappointment and responsibility, then we should not be surprised when some struggle to become confident, independent and employable adults.

That does not mean every young person receiving support is unwilling to work. Many are dealing with serious illness, disability or barriers that are entirely real.

But employability is not just about qualifications.

It is also about resilience. Turning up. Taking feedback. Handling rejection. Working with other people. Recovering when something goes wrong. Keeping going when life is difficult.

Those are skills children should begin learning long before they enter the workplace.

In April 2026, 511,529 Personal Independence Payment claimants aged 16 to 29 had psychiatric disorder recorded as their main condition.

Psychiatric disorder was the main recorded condition for:

83% of PIP claimants aged 16–19
77% of those aged 20–24
71% of those aged 25–29

These are not the same people counted in the children’s referral figures, and the numbers do not prove a direct pipeline from child referral to PIP.

But they show why this debate cannot end when a child turns 18.

PIP is not an unemployment benefit. Many claimants have serious, long-term conditions and many are in work.

But if more young people are reaching adulthood already defined by anxiety, diagnosis, ill-health and dependence on support systems, then the knock-on effects will be felt in workplaces, communities, public services and the welfare system.

The welfare bill is not where this story begins.

It may be where the consequences eventually show up.

What Needs To Change

The NHS must be there for children with serious mental-health needs. A diagnosis can be life-changing when it unlocks the right treatment and support.

But the NHS cannot be the answer to every problem in childhood.

Every referral needs clinicians, time and money. The more we route ordinary pressure, disappointment and anxiety into clinical systems, the harder it becomes for children in genuine crisis to get help quickly.

The goal should not be an ever-larger mental-health service dealing with ever-larger numbers of children.

It should be fewer children reaching crisis point in the first place.

That means parents, schools, clubs and communities doing more to build resilience early, setting boundaries, encouraging effort, giving honest feedback and helping children learn that difficult feelings can be faced, managed and overcome.

Treatment matters.

But prevention, resilience and preparation for adult life matter just as much.

The Bigger Question

A country that sends more than one million children into mental-health services is not just facing an NHS capacity crisis.

It is being forced to confront a harder question.

What generation are we creating?

Children deserve fast, serious help when they are unwell.

But they also deserve a childhood that equips them to cope with pressure, rejection, criticism and failure.

A healthier generation will not be created solely by adding more appointments at the end of the process. It will be created by adults, families, schools, clubs and communities doing more at the beginning of it, building confidence, setting boundaries, encouraging effort and teaching children that difficult feelings can be faced, managed and overcome.

That is not old-fashioned.

It is essential.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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