Sunak to tackle ‘sick note culture’ in welfare speech

Image source, PA Media

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will call for an end to the UK’s “sick note culture” in a speech on welfare reform.

Mr Sunak is considering moving responsibility for assessing fitness to work away from GPs to “specialist work and health professionals” in England.

A record high of 2.8m people are out of work as of February 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Labour says the government has “run out of ideas” and has failed to deliver a healthy nation or economy.

In a speech announcing plans to overhaul the benefits system on Friday, the prime minister is expected to say the focus must shift away from what people cannot do to what work people might be able to do.

“We don’t just need to change the sick note, we need to change the sick note culture so the default becomes what work you can do – not what you can’t,” Mr Sunak is expected to say.

He will also warn against “over-medicalising the everyday challenges and worries of life”.

Opposition parties say changes to sick notes – officially known as fit notes – have been announced previously by the government.

A call for evidence will be published on Friday seeking responses from healthcare professionals, employers, and those with lived experiences asking how the current process works and how it can be improved.

Mr Sunak is expected to refer to challenges presented since the pandemic, with the government saying a “significant number of working aged people have become inactive due to long-term sickness which has in large part been driven by mental health conditions”.

The government said NHS data showed almost 11m fit notes were issued last year in England, with 94% of those signed “not fit for work”.

It also said a large proportion of these were repeat fit notes issued without any advice.

But Prof Kamila Hawthorne, chair of the Royal College of GPs, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it was standard practice for surgeries to check in and provide advice for their patients before giving repeat fit notes.

She added that as a profession, GPs were “not against the idea” of moving responsibility for issuing notes to other professionals, but she said the practice was quite often part of a “normal consultation” with a patient.

The prime minister’s speech comes a month after Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride faced criticism for an interview in which he said there was “a real risk” that “the normal ups and downs of human life” were being labelled as medical conditions which then held people back from working.

Those comments were described as “disappointing” by the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, while the Centre for Mental Health charity said they risked “belittling people’s struggles”.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Friday, Mr Stride said work was part of the solution to tackle what he described as the “increasing prevalence of mental health in society”.

“It is good for people to have good work – that routine, that going in, interacting with people, having that sense of purpose,” he said.

He told the programme too many people were being signed off sick which was detrimental for individuals, communities and the economy, arguing a more “holistic” approach was needed.

Ahead of Mr Sunak’s speech on Friday, Alison McGovern, Labour’s acting shadow work and pensions secretary, said: “A healthy nation is critical to a healthy economy, but the Tories have completely failed on both.”

She claimed 14 years of Conservative government had resulted in a record number of people “locked out of work because they are sick – at terrible cost to them, to business and to the taxpayer paying billions more in spiralling benefits bills.

“Today’s announcement proves that this failed government has run out of ideas, announcing the same minor alternation to fit notes that we’ve heard them try before.”

The Lib Dem Work and Pensions spokesperson Wendy Chamberlain said: “These reheated announcements will do nothing to help the millions languishing in pain on waiting lists.

“This is a prime minister and a Conservative government that has overseen nothing but stagnant economic growth and forced families to choose between heating and eating.”

Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer said: “The prime minister should be fixing the NHS so that people can get well, not blaming people who are ill.

“We would invest in mending the health and social care system, not denying people the right to see a GP when they need it.”