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Melissa Lawford Economics Correspondent |
Seven-year-olds are now more likely to receive disability benefits than 50-year-olds, as the number of children claiming handouts hits one million this year.
The number of children receiving Disability Living Allowance (DLA), the main benefit to support children with disabilities, has more than doubled since the pandemic, with annual spending forecast to reach almost £8bn within five years.
Official figures show 69,799 seven-year-olds had parents claiming DLA in March 2026, compared with 66,670 50-year-olds who were entitled to Personal Independence Payment or equivalent benefits.
It means around one in 10 seven-year-olds and one in nine 10-year-olds now receive the benefit.
In total, there are 915,000 children in England and Wales receiving DLA, and the number is expected to surpass one million this year. This will be more than triple the 314,000 recorded in 2010.
Telegraph analysis shows the proportion of all children receiving the benefit exceeds one in five in some parts of England.
MPs said the surge raised questions about how children were diagnosed and supported, and whether the welfare system was setting them on a path to lifelong reliance on benefits.
Reform and the Tories have proposed restricting new claims for some mental health conditions in children, but Labour has largely focused welfare reform efforts on working-age adults.
This report is available only to subscribers.
Continue reading ➤
How Britain’s disability crisis sets children up for a life on benefits ➤ |
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Steve Bird Senior News Reporter |
Seven years ago a surveillance camera on the MI6 building by the Thames captured the moment Zac Brettler leapt to his death from the balcony of a fifth-floor luxury flat.
The mystery about why that 19-year-old jumped into the London river has been the subject of a bestseller and is soon to be made into a television series.
The Telegraph has now been granted exclusive access to recordings of Brettler’s inquest which offer new insights into why the former private schoolboy died.
They reveal the double life he was leading: despite being the son of a respected north London Jewish family he was also posing as the son of a Russian oligarch set to inherit a multi-million-pound fortune.
Did he go to that apartment to meet two “friends” to discuss a personal crisis? Or, was he beaten up by a man with a criminal past?
The hearing included an account of that fateful night from Verinder Sharma, the ruthless gangland enforcer who lived in the flat. He claimed to be supporting his friend, despite his text messages suggesting he was angry with Brettler, who he thought owed him a share of his supposed inheritance.
It also featured the testimony of Akbar Shamji, the son of a millionaire Conservative donor, who took Brettler to the apartment and insisted “no violence” took place there.
Although both men were questioned by police about that night, neither of them was charged in connection with his death. Sharma is now dead. Shamji, now a crypto-businessman, is living abroad.
For subscribers only ➤ |
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Allister Heath The irony of the PM’s Brexit dog-whistle is that it’s progressives who fall for conspiracy theories and brainwashing Continue reading ➤
Jake Wallis Simons Elon Musk and Trump are throwing Ukraine to the wolves Continue reading ➤
Tim Stanley Brace yourself for another gear change! Burnham’s shifting into reverse Continue reading ➤ |
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• Andy Burnham is pushing for an EU migration deal that would restore British access to the bloc’s criminal and asylum databases – while handing European judges new powers over the country.
• Britain’s economy slowed in August, with gross domestic product growing only 0.1 per cent, in a worrying sign for John Healey before the Budget later this month.
• Russell Brand was a “ruthless, calculated and manipulative sexual predator” who bragged about wanting to sleep with 5,000 women in his lifetime, a court has heard.
Russell Brand in the dock at Southwark Crown Court in a court artist’s sketch |
• The White House has attacked Kemi Badenoch after she criticised Nigel Farage for saying he would give the Chagos Islands to Donald Trump.
• Reform UK activists have been accused of expressing racist and sexist views after an undercover investigation. Councillors were filmed describing Asian homeowners as “parasites” and black children as “animals”. One called the King “traitorous” and said he should be beheaded over rumours he was Muslim.
• Finally, two controversial figures returned to English football last night. Pep Guardiola visited the Etihad to watch Manchester City’s 2-4 loss to Paris St-Germain, while Mason Greenwood appeared for Fenerbahce in the club’s 6-0 defeat to Aston Villa. You can read Oliver Brown’s take on Pep’s return here.
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Russia launched huge ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv yesterday |
One moment, the Ukrainian drone was on route to its target. The next, the pilot lost track of it entirely. On Wednesday, the world found out why: Donald Trump’s administration has decided to restrict Kyiv’s use of the SpaceX Starlink satellite network, making it impossible to communicate with drones moving at above 100 miles per hour. The US president may want to force Ukraine into concessions for peace. But if history is any guide, Kyiv – and its European partners – will plough on, constructing their alternatives to Elon Musk’s groundbreaking system at still a more rapid pace.
Continue reading ➤
Zelensky: I feel betrayed by Trump ➤
Musk blames US president for Ukraine drone chaos ➤ |
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Nitazenes, synthetic opioids that are up to 500 times more potent than heroin, have been blamed for at least 400 deaths in Britain. Experts warn the real toll may be far higher, as the drugs – which can be injected, snorted, swallowed, smoked or vaped – leave only minuscule traces in the bloodstream. Colin Freeman reports. Continue reading ➤ |
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Hugo was a well-liked, sociable and gifted 34-year-old when, in 2023, he was strangled to death by a fellow patient on an NHS mental-health ward. His death was initially presented as a tragic accident, but as his family pressed for answers, their grief turned to horror: staff asleep on duty, falsified records and a culture of deceit. Not only had Hugo’s death been avoidable, they discovered, but the NHS staff entrusted with his care had sought to conceal the truth about what had happened. Continue reading ➤ |
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Talksport has its sights set on two of the BBC’s most cherished sporting institutions: Test Match Special and Formula One. Emboldened by rising audiences and the corporation’s financial troubles, the commercial broadcaster is plotting an audacious expansion. Whether its famously brash approach can win over cricket and motor racing traditionalists is another matter. Continue reading ➤ |
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Looking for some fresh ideas to zhuzh up your style? You’re in the right place, writes Lisa Armstrong, our Head of Fashion. I’ve selected styling tricks and tips from the very best of this season’s shows to freshen up every sartorial scenario. Yes, the catwalks. It can sometimes seem as though designers are talking to people who inhabit an alternative planet. If you know where to look, they offer some great ideas that work across ages, budgets and body shapes. Some are that rare thing: free. Continue reading ➤ Here are two other articles that I hope you’ll find helpful this morning:
- Yes, we’re aware it’s only October, but make sure you get in early for our final Telegraph Recommended event of the year. Victoria Moore and William Sitwell will host an evening of festive taste tests. Click here to book.
- Plus, if your child has received Kent Test results today, our guide to the best grammar schools might be of interest.
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‘It’s time someone stood up for Luton airport’In this column, one of our writers takes an unfashionable position, either defending a subject that’s been unfairly maligned or criticising something that most people love.
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Simon Calder Travel Correspondent |
The 1970s Cinzano ad is a classic. A lovestruck young man in a European sunspot asks Lorraine Chase: “Were you truly wafted here from paradise?”
All together now: “Nah – Luton airport.”
At the time the venerable Bedfordshire airport was justifiably the object of ridicule: a spartan location, moribund save for the occasional burst of charter flight activity. The no-frills revolution changed all that.
A start-up named easyJet launched flights from Luton to Glasgow and Edinburgh in November 1995. The rest is budget airline history. No other British airport has such intense competition with all the big low-cost operators – easyJet, Jet2, Ryanair, Tui and Wizz Air – squaring off against each other.
I keep returning because of the sheer good value, and range of destinations. If it is eastern European and exotic, at least in European terms, you can probably fly there from Luton. Consequently the terminal is heaving from before dawn to dusk. It was described as “the Taj Mahal” in the 1990s by easyJet, unhappy about paying for the new facility.
Today, it is a confusing, crowded labyrinth of shops, bars, corridors and stairs. Luton is Wizz Air’s main base in Britain. The airline’s new extra-large Airbus jets mean the number of passengers on each plane just keeps growing. Yet airports, like prisons and hospitals, are not intended to be fun; most people simply want to get out as quickly as possible.
Londoners have traditionally disdained Luton because of its poor public transport links. Now there are frequent trains from London St Pancras and many other stations in the capital. Inconveniently, the airport is over a mile away up a steep hill from the station. A new-ish Dart monorail shuttle will take you to the terminal. I don’t like the fare – almost £5 for a four-minute journey – but package it up with a cheap Luton Airport Express ticket with East Midlands Railway and the cost comes down.
It works. My last flight to Luton from the Romanian city of Brașov was held up when a passenger decided to leave the plane just before departure. So efficient were the arrivals formalities, the shuttle and the train, that I was in central London in just 45 minutes. Try doing that at Heathrow or Stansted.
The wider truth: while London is lamentable at building new runways, it remains the world capital of aviation precisely because airports like Luton work to extract enormous amounts of capacity from their limited facilities. Long may that continue.
Do you agree with Simon? Send your replies here. Please confirm in your response that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name. |
The Big AppleEvery weekday, Orlando Bird, our loyal Reader Correspondent, shares an off-piste topic that has brought out the best of your opinions and stories. Orlando writes...
It’s a year since I was last in New York. At the time, there had recently been some rather doom-laden talk – including from the normally even-handed President of the United States – about how the city was in sharp decline, hurtling back to the bad old Taxi Driver days.
That didn’t ring particularly true for my family, as I later wrote. Even in the Bronx – not a noted tourist hotspot – we found sweeping parks, an excellent zoo and an Italian-American restaurant that I still think about more or less daily.
Now, as Chris Leadbeater reports, New York has been voted the world’s greatest city for the third year running. He agrees with that verdict. Readers have been a little more ambivalent, however.
One wrote: “I returned to New York this summer, albeit briefly, and was pleasantly surprised by the improved cleanliness and safety in the streets and on the subway. The prices, though? My goodness. I was grateful that I was there for work and expensing my meals and coffees, which seemed to have more than doubled in cost since I was there pre-pandemic.”
Even New York’s staunchest defenders must concede that there’s something in this point. Jonathan Smith added: “I used to love (and actually lived in) the US, but I can’t abide the aggressive tipping culture that’s developed. You are literally handed something over the counter and then somehow owe a tax on top of the tax. Madness.”
For Jenny Smith, too, the laurels belonged elsewhere: “I love New York but the range and sheer diversity of London beat it hands-down every time.”
Richard Leader, meanwhile, offered a resident’s view: “Some of New York’s harshest critics are the people who live here. We complain about everything: the mayor, the governor, the subway, the endless construction, crime, the crazies, our sports teams. The list goes on.
“There’s a self-aggrandising gloom to it, but just watch someone from out of town criticise New York in the presence of New Yorkers; they get both barrels. I love and loathe this city in equal measure. Though a Londoner by upbringing, I would not want to call anywhere else my main home.” Is New York the greatest city in the world? If not, which is? Send your responses here, and the best of the bunch will feature in a future edition of this newsletter.
Please confirm in your reply that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name. |
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1666 | The waistcoat is decreed by King Charles II as part of an Englishman’s correct dress, as he wore it with the bottom button undone
1987 | The Great Storm of 1987 hits southern Britain with hurricane-strength winds, causing widespread damage and 18 deaths
2017 | The round old £1 coin officially ceases to be legal tender, replaced by the 12-sided coin
2021 | Sir David Amess is stabbed to death at a constituency surgery (you can see how we covered this in the following day’s paper below)
Birthdays: Anthony Joshua (37), Dominic West (57), Sarah Ferguson (67)
Also, in the news today, Mike Tyson is embroiled in a £1.5m court fight over claims he pulled out of a publicity campaign because he did not want to teach whom to fight? 1. Elon Musk
2. His pet tiger
3. Jake Paul
4. A giant talking pigeon
Click one of the options to reveal the answer... |
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Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including The 1% Club, Cogs, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.
Yesterday’s Panagram was GUILLEMOT. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle. |
Thank you for reading. Have a fulfilling day and I hope to see you tomorrow. Chris Evans, Editor
I’d love to hear what you think of this newsletter. You can email me your feedback at fromtheeditor@telegraph.co.uk. |
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