(BRITAIN) – Full Fact said a claim that Britain had begun a “death spiral” because welfare spending exceeded income tax receipts in 2025/26 was “partly true but misleading,” saying the crossover had happened before and was forecast to reverse next year.

The fact-checking organisation said welfare spending reached £333 billion in 2025/26, while income tax receipts stood at £331 billion, citing figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility and historic OBR documents.

Patrick Christys, a GB News host, used the phrase “death spiral” to describe the position. Full Fact said that description was political framing rather than an official economic assessment.

Those two numbers sit close together, but Full Fact said the comparison loses force without historical context. Welfare spending has been higher than income tax receipts every year since at least 2013/14, it said.

That makes 2025/26 notable for the narrowness of the gap, not for breaking new ground. Full Fact said the difference narrowed in 2025/26 and is projected to flip in 2026/27, when income tax receipts are expected to exceed welfare spending again.

The Office for Budget Responsibility figures also place the annual totals in a broader fiscal setting than the phrase “death spiral” suggests. A one-year comparison between welfare spending and income tax receipts captures one pressure point in the public finances, but not the whole budget.

Welfare spending, as measured here, includes state pensions as well as benefits such as universal credit. That means it does not describe spending only on people who are out of work.

The distinction matters because state pensions account for a large part of the total. A headline comparison with income tax receipts can suggest a direct link between unemployment-related support and tax intake that the underlying measure does not show.

Full Fact’s assessment turned on that gap between the numbers and the political claim attached to them. The organisation did not dispute that welfare spending exceeded income tax receipts in 2025/26; it disputed the suggestion that this marked the start of a new fiscal pattern.

On the figures cited, the pattern is older and more stable than the claim implies. Welfare spending has exceeded income tax receipts every year since at least 2013/14, and the latest year is projected to be followed by a reversal in 2026/27.

That weakens the argument that Britain has entered a one-way deterioration in which welfare spending is permanently outrunning the tax base. The projected reversal does not erase pressure on the public finances, but it does cut against the idea of an uninterrupted slide.

The long-term numbers still point upward. Welfare spending is forecast to rise to £407 billion in 2030/31, equivalent to 11.2% of GDP.

Those projections come from the Office for Budget Responsibility, which produces official forecasts for the public finances. They show welfare spending remaining a large share of national output even as annual relationships between spending lines and tax receipts shift from year to year.

That fiscal context matters because income tax receipts are only one source of government revenue. A comparison between welfare spending and income tax receipts can be arithmetically correct while still offering a narrow picture of how the state raises and spends money.

Full Fact’s verdict reflected that distinction. It accepted the basic numbers for 2025/26, but said the claim was misleading because it presented an established pattern as a new threshold and attached a stark label to a more complicated set of public finance data.

The numbers themselves are straightforward. Income tax receipts totalled £331 billion in 2025/26, and welfare spending totalled £333 billion.

The argument over those numbers is less about arithmetic than about interpretation. Calling the gap a “death spiral” turns a small annual difference into a judgment about the direction of the economy and the sustainability of public spending.

Full Fact did not adopt that judgment. Its assessment said the claim was “partly true but misleading,” drawing a line between verified figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility and a political description that goes beyond what those figures alone establish.

The composition of welfare spending is central to that distinction. Because the total includes state pensions alongside benefits such as universal credit, the figure captures support tied to age as well as income, work status and other eligibility rules.

That leaves the public debate on familiar ground in Britain, where welfare spending, tax revenues and the reach of the state remain contested political territory. The figures show pressure, but they also show a narrower gap in 2025/26 and a forecast reversal in 2026/27, a pattern that does not fit the claim that a “death spiral” has just begun.