The prime minister is setting out to tackle “sick-note culture”. Emily Hohler reports
Politics & economics
Rishi Sunak set out his “moral mission” to reform the welfare system in a speech last Friday, warning against “over-medicalising everyday challenges” and saying that the recent rises in spending on sickness benefits were “obviously financially unsustainable”. His proposals were met with criticism.
Disability charity Scope described it as a “full-on assault on disabled people” and the British Medical Association echoed Keir Starmer’s calls to focus on lengthy NHS waiting lists instead, condemning Sunak’s “hostile rhetoric on sick-note culture”.
On the same day, the Department for Work and Pensions “quietly released updated forecasts”, says Kate Andrews in The Spectator. It expects there to be 3.96 million working-age claimants by 2028-2029, up from 2.8 million in 2023-2024, while the number of those receiving disability benefits is forecast to rise to 1.16 million. Currently, 2.8 million people are registered as “long-term sick” and 5.6 million are on some kind of out-of-work benefit. Britain only has a low headline unemployment rate of 4.2% because the numbers don’t include those who’ve stopped looking for work. As Sunak pointed out, we now spend £69bn on benefits for working-age people with a disability or health condition, more than we spend on schools, transport or policing. Spending on personal independence payments (PIPs) alone (an “indefinite award” worth up to £798 a month) is forecast to increase by more than 50% over the next four years (anxiety and depression are the main reasons people receive a PIP, notes The Times). Proposed changes include requiring more medical evidence to substantiate PIP claims and shifting responsibility for issuing “fit notes” away from GPs to a new class of specialists.
This is a “classic” Tory thinking,” says Frances Ryan in The Guardian. Don’t address the causes, just “get someone who is not a doctor” to declare people aren’t actually sick. The non-means-tested PIP, introduced in 2013, is designed to help cover the extra costs that come with disability, which is why it is permanent. Offering people with mental-health conditions treatments instead of benefits is meaningless when there is a 1.9 million waiting list in England alone. Britai
