Giving millions sick notes is too heavy a burden for taxpayer
IN THE popular 1990s TV drama London’s Burning, there was a character known by his fellow firefighters as “Sick Note”. He was a hard-core hypochondriac, always worrying that a sore back or a headache was a sign of a more serious ailment and inclined to take time off work to get it checked out.
These days such a nickname would no doubt be deemed to constitute unacceptable workplace bullying, while the modern notion that feeling stressed or a bit down could amount to disabling mental illness would give Bert Quigley (Sick Note’s proper name) many more excuses not to show up on shift.
Since the pandemic, the number of actual sick notes being dispensed by GPs has risen sharply, as has the number of people being deemed indefinitely unfit for work and moved onto long-term disability benefits, mainly on grounds of men- tal health conditions.
After failing to back his Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride’s warnings that things had “gone too far” on this front a month or so ago, Rishi Sunak has belatedly decided that action is required after all.
The Prime Minister yesterday set out plans to tackle what he called Britain’s burgeoning “sick note culture”.
Sunak declared that “work is good for people” and said he was worried that benefits had become a “lifestyle choice”.
AS THE architect of the hugely expensive furlough scheme that paid millions of people to sit around doing nothing during Covid lockdowns, he might have pondered his own role in the declining British work ethic. But that would be asking too much of a politician so we should instead welcome his change of tack.
Because what he said – and what Stride said before him – is surely correct. Sunak said he was on “a moral mission” to support young people struggling with anxiety and depression back into work.
“There is nothing compassionate about leaving a generation of young people to sit alone in the dark before a flickering screen watching as their dreams slip further from reach,” he added.
Part of the new approach will be to remove from GPs the task of issuing sick notes (or “fit notes” to give them their euphemistic official name).
Instead, specialist assessors not subject to the pester-power that can be wielded by claimants against hard-pressed family doctors are to be deployed.
This, Sunak believes, will mean fewer sick notes and far more stringent checks before semi-automatic repeat sick notes become available.
There will also be tougher benefits rules. Those still not in employment after 12 months of being supported by a work coach facing the withdrawal of state-funded income support. This is all to the good. Exempting millions of physically fit adults from the responsibility to earn their own living has become far too heavy a burden on hard-working taxpayers and also an excuse for the mass immigration racket making issues such as the housing shortage far worse.
But why leave it until six months before a general election and the likely takeover of power by the Labour party to get stuck into the task?
One does not have to be a cynic to suspect Sunak’s new posture is a pre-election gimmick, designed to boost flagging poll ratings while never likely to come into effect.
Because who believes the politically correct, nambypamby Labour party can be relied on to get tough on malingering? Labour frontbencher Alison McGovern reacted to Mr
Sunak’s speech by claiming record numbers of people were “locked out of work because they are sick”.
So we can see which way the wind is blowing there – and not in the direction of lifting people off their sofas.
MR STRIDE was meanwhile sticking to his guns, cheerfully telling the BBC too many people were being signed off sick when they were fit to work. “It’s good for people to have good work – that routine, that going in, interacting with people, having that sense of purpose,” he said.
Finally, he has his boss onside too. But although there are nearly a million job vacancies, it’s going to be an uphill struggle to achieve much in his remaining time in office.
In London’s Burning, Sick Note turned his hand to political activism, campaigning for a smoking ban at the fire station and becoming a local Green party councillor.
Sunak has more than matched him as regards smoking bans, but if yesterday’s speech shows he is finally stepping up as leader of a commonsense Blue party, then it is a case of better late than never.
‘Who believes politically correct Labour will ever get tough?’