We hardy Brits should be proud of soldiering on with a sniffle

There was a time when government ministers called on the British people to pick up arms, to put their shoulders to the wheel, to keep calm and carry on, and do all manner of heroic deeds for the good of their fellow countrymen and women. This being the strange year that it is, the battle cry from the Health Secretary is now rather different, as he told the nation’s army of workers that their country needs them… to stay in bed.

Giving evidence to a Commons committee on Tuesday, Matt Hancock declared that he wanted to change the “culture” of Britons “soldiering on” and going into work with “flu symptoms or a runny nose”. Why, he asked incredulously, was this “acceptable”, insisting that we British are “peculiarly unusual and outliers” for thinking that “as long as you can get out of bed, you still should get into work”.

It turns out that doing your duty involves rather less courage and stoicism than in days gone by. Forget braving the First World War trenches, all the modern-day Briton has to do for his country is spend the day under the duvet drinking Lemsip at the first sign of a sniffle, to save passing on their ailment to their colleagues.

It sounds to me like Dr Hancock needs a large dose of smelling salts.

How on earth could businesses cope if every member of staff with a headache and a runny nose called in sick each morning? And given that every extra bank holiday costs the economy billions in lost productivity and taxes paid, just who, pray, does Matt Hancock expect to foot the bill for all this sick leave?

We already know that public sector workers take far more days off sick on average than the private sector, while the self-employed take far fewer than staff. As a selfemployed contractor who only gets paid if I turn up to work, I am painfully aware of the cost of a day at home. Indeed, I have not taken a single day off sick in the past five years – and that includes the three weeks I presented my daily radio show from home during lockdown while I was ill with Covid.

Yet even in the public sector, such a sickness policy would cause mayhem. How would schools function if every teacher stayed at home every time they sneezed? How would the police manage if officers were constantly taking a day off with a sore throat?

Feeling under the weather is just part of everyday life. If you spend every September battling cold after cold, congratulations – you are the parent of a school-aged child! We tell our kids they’ll feel better for getting out and about and taking their minds off it, so why shouldn’t that be true for grown-ups, too?

Soldiering on is a national trait of which to be proud, not one to be mocked. We must not allow Covid to turn us into a country of hypochondriacs, fearful of every minor symptom. Yes, of course if you may have a highly infectious deadly disease, you should not put your colleagues at risk, but let’s not pretend that every cough is going to kill us.

Matt Hancock might want the country to go on to a permanent Sick-watch, but that’s not the medicine the doctor ordered. Indeed, that’s nothing but a fast track back to being the sick man of Europe. So throw off the duvet, grab a hankie and get back to work. Your country needs you.