Direct aid, subsidies, tax breaks – the hidden welfare budget we don’t debate

Vast sums are handed out in corporate welfare and official silence is skewing the debate, so the public don't know where billions of their own taxes are going

In 2013, just days before laying out his autumn statement, George Osborne told the BBC: "The cost of welfare is one of the things that makes the public finances unsustainable. We need an affordable state." The government had to cut the bloated welfare state because it was sucking up too much money.

Yet in the financial year ending March 2013, the Guardian can reveal, Britons handed 93bn in welfare to corporations. That is enough to wipe out at a stroke this year's budget deficit - and it was given to companies in direct aid, subsidies and tax breaks.