Rishi Sunak plans stricter rules to address the UK’s “sick leave culture.

Labour force participation among working-age Britons has reached its lowest point since 2015. This decline is attributed to a rise in long-term illness and a higher number of students. In contrast, other large, wealthy nations have seen an increase in labour force participation since 2020.

Chancellor Sunak expressed concern about the growing number of people not working due to mental health conditions. He emphasized the need for a more ambitious approach to help people return to work and cautioned against overly medicalizing everyday challenges. Official data shows that 9.4 million Britons aged 16 to 64, constituting 22% of that age group, are neither working nor unemployed.

This is an increase from 8.55 million just before the pandemic. Among these individuals, 2.8 million are categorized as long-term sick and 206,000 as temporarily ill.

Last year, Britain’s budget watchdog revealed that a quarter of those on long-term sick leave were awaiting medical treatment. Nonetheless, reducing waiting lists to their 2015 length might only result in 25,000 individuals returning to work.

Over half of the long-term sick reported suffering from conditions such as depression, bad nerves, or anxiety, often as secondary conditions alongside their main health issue. Sunak’s office highlighted the tendency of healthcare professionals to issue repeat notes for extended sick leave without guiding individuals on returning to work, leading to a shift towards long-term sickness benefits. Sunak proposed a test to transfer the responsibility for assessment from family doctors to healthcare workers focused on providing an objective evaluation of an individual’s work ability and tailored support for them to do so.

Overall, the emphasis is on changing the culture surrounding sick notes to prioritize an individual’s capacity for work rather than their limitations. This aims to encourage a shift in the default mindset towards exploring what work individuals can do.