UK population and benefit claimants: What do the official figures show?

Around 8.6 million people across the UK were likely to be claiming universal credit towards the end of 2025 (Alamy) -

The UK population is estimated to have grown by nearly three million between 2020 and 2025, official figures show, not by 12 million as stated by Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

In an interview for Sky News broadcast on Wednesday, Sir Jim said: “The population of the UK was 58 million in 2020, now it’s 70 million – that’s 12 million people.”