Long term sickness is costing taxpayers billions – we have to stop dishing out sicknotes and get people back to work

HOW predictable that Labour and the Lib Dems feign outrage at the Prime Minister’s announcement that in future sick notes, or “fit notes” as we are now supposed to call them, will have to be written by a specialist team rather than GPs.

It is the standard attack line on any-thing to do with benefits that the heartless Tories would happily kick the crutches from the old and sick, just for the fun of it.

Getty

Getty

Only “kind” Labour and Lib Dem people care about people less fortunate than themselves.

But there is nothing kind about shunting people on to sickness benefits for years on end.

On the contrary, it is cruelty itself, depriving people of a sense of purpose and condemning them to lives of emptiness and reliance on others.

The welfare system shouldn’t be writing people off, it should be nurturing them.

It should be a safety net which picks people up when they are unable to find work, or when they find themselves too unwell to work, but which seeks to get them back into work as soon as possible.

Change in attitude

This is not what has been happening.

For decades the sickness benefits system has worked on the assumption that once people fall ill they will remain too unwell to work for life.

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The Conservatives tried to put this right when Iain Duncan Smith became Work and Pensions Secretary in 2010.

For several years the number of people on out-of-work benefits trended downwards.

But since the pandemic there has been a huge explosion in the number of people signed off on sickness benefits.

While the official unemployment rate remains low, the total number on out-of-work benefits tells a different story.

There are now 5.6million in this position, twice as many as a decade ago. Half these people are on long-term sickness benefits.

Not only is this costing taxpayers, it is starving the economy of labour.

The growing numbers of people lost to the economy is one of the two main reasons why it is stagnant, the other being lousy productivity.

Since 2020 the bill for sickness benefits has risen from £42billion to £69billion.

Obviously, the pandemic brought sickness. Some people, sadly, have suffered long-term consequences after contracting Covid-19.

But are we really now, four years after the height of the pandemic, so much sicker as a nation?

Or have months of lockdown led to a change in attitude toward work, which has made some more inclined to seek excuses not to do it?

I fear the latter. You just have to listen to these civil service unions threatening to strike because they have been asked to go into the office just two days a week, or the campaign by some council officials for a four-day week, to realise some now regard work as optional, something they only need to do if they feel like it.

A large part of Britain’s problem seems to be an apparent rise in mental illness

Ross Clark

Britain seems pretty well alone in suffering a huge rise in people dropping out of the workforce since the pandemic.

In most other countries the number economically inactive has long since returned to pre-pandemic levels.

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A large part of Britain’s problem seems to be an apparent rise in mental illness.

Just over half of those on long-term sickness benefits, according to the Office for National Statistics, say they suffer from depression, nerves or anxiety.

Mental illness is very serious and costs far too many lives.

But as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said today, we are medicalising the ordinary challenges of life too much.

People who feel a bit down or anxious about work are not ill. They are normal.

Work is coming to be treated as something that is bad for you, rather than something that stimulates the mind and keeps people active.

One of the Government’s biggest difficulties is getting young people back to work, and a report in February revealed that they are suffering an epidemic of mental health problems.

According to official data, 34 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 reported mental health issues such as depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder in 2021-22.

It is a significant increase on the 2000 figure of 24 per cent, with young women one-and-a-half times more likely to be affected.

The report also found 79 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds workless due to ill health have qualifications at only GCSE level or below.

Signing a sick note makes for an easy life

Ross Clark

This compares with 34 per cent of all people in that age group.

I am sure GPs, or most of them, feel they are being conscientious when asked by patients for a sick note.

But there is bound to be pressure to nod along with a patient’s demand, especially when they know they will see the patient back in their surgery in the near future.

Signing a sick note makes for an easy life.

But however much GPs may think they are being fair, statistics speak for them-selves, the system is not working. Far too many sick notes are being written.

Tough questions

That is why it is right for the Government to put the business of writing them to independent assessors, who can ask tough questions and look for things which people are capable of doing.

Liz Truss was right about one thing — Britain’s biggest problem at the moment is a lack of economic growth.

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Without it we cannot enjoy higher living standards. And we cannot have growth unless we have people working.

For years, governments have shunted people off “on to the sick” because it helps keep down unemployment figures.

But that won’t fool anyone any more.

Britain has a big problem with people dropping out of work.

The numbers of unemployed are dwarfed by the numbers who are, officially, too ill to work.

The Government would be doing no one any favours by ignoring this.

Opposition parties who accuse them of an unfeeling attitude toward benefit claimants should be ashamed.

It is they who condemn people to workless misery.