Long-term sick should be forced to seek work, says Labour adviser
The long-term sick must be required to look for jobs to deal with unsustainable welfare costs and reduce the country’s “toxic” reliance on immigration, a government health adviser has urged.
Alan Milburn, a former health secretary, found that seven out of ten of the economically inactive want to work but few have any help or requirement to do so, and said there should be fundamental reform of a “crazy” system.
In a report he presented alongside Liz Kendall, the work and pension secretary, he said that dealing with record numbers outside the workforce was the “only route to higher levels of economic growth”.
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Kendall acknowledged that dealing with long-term sickness was “central” to Sir Keir Starmer’s plan for growth and she promised fundamental overhaul of job centres and back-to-work support to deal with “spiralling” economic inactivity.
While praising Milburn’s “brilliant report”, she stopped short of backing his plan to impose conditions on sickness benefits, saying the priority was better health and employment services. “There have always been conditions to look for work and consequences if you don’t, that won’t change. But I want to see a much greater focus on that upfront help and support,” she said. “I think we’ve had too much of a focus on [clampdowns] rather than the help and support people really need to get into work.”
There are a record 2.8 million people off work because of long-term sickness, part of 9.4 million people neither in employment nor looking for a job, more than one in five of all those of working age.
With the cost of sickness benefits due to reach £64 billion a year by the end of the parliament, up by £30 billion on pre-Covid levels, Kendall said: “Spiralling economic inactivity is bad for individuals, many of whom want to work, it’s bad for employers who are desperate to recruit, and it is bad for our public finances.”
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But Kendall also dismissed claims by her predecessor, Mel Stride, that labelling everyday worries as mental health problems was pushing up the benefits bill. “Divisive rhetoric about strivers versus scroungers, or claiming people just feel ‘too bluesy’ to work may have grabbed headlines, but it did absolutely nothing to actually get Britain working again,” she said.
Arguing that the “vast majority” of claimants needed help, she said that inactivity was “driven by the fact that we are an older, sicker nation”. Kendall added that “the pandemic had a real impact on the mental health of young people”, promising treatment and support earlier. Kendall concluded that her department had become too focused on overseeing benefits payments, saying: “We need fundamental reform so a department for welfare becomes a genuine Department for Work.”
She was speaking in Barnsley, where Milburn has been carrying out a review of how a former “epicentre” of unemployment had seen jobseekers replaced by the long-term sick. He said he was surprised that polling for his review found seven in ten of those classed as unable to work said they would like a job.
Yet although eight out of ten of them were claiming benefits, “only one in ten actually have any contact with employment services that could help them to work. This is what you call a catastrophic systems failure,” Milburn said.
Saying that nationwide these findings could mean an extra 4.5 million potential workers, he said: “The officially unemployed are outnumbered now six to one by people who are economically inactive, who have no engagement with job centres. This is crazy.”
He said the Conservatives had been “relying on toughening benefit rules to deal with what is largely a health-related problem”, calling for “a better balance between sticks and carrots”.
However, he acknowledged a “perversity” in the benefits system that has created incentives to be signed off sick. “If you are officially seeking work, you get help to do so, you have regular contacts and a lot of hassle, but you get lower benefits than if you’re classified as unable to work where you get no hassle and no contacts,” he said.
While stressing that some people would never be able to work, Milburn said that he had identified “a group of people who are willing to work but are not being helped to do so”.
“We’ve got to have a two-way street,” he said. “The state will provide more help, greater personalisation, better integration for example of health and employment support services. But if you’re on state benefits, and economically inactive, you have a duty to engage with those better services.”
Urging Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, to find upfront cash for a “a genuine case of investing to save”, Milburn, who is advising Wes Streeting, the health secretary, also said the NHS should be required to help employment services.
Such a drive to get people back to work would also deal with the “toxic issue” of immigration and prevent a “tide of populism” seen in Europe from sweeping Britain, Milburn argues. “This is a wake-up call for the new Labour government,” he writes in The Times today, urging ministers and bosses “to wean themselves off the easy solution of importing more workers from overseas”.
Getting people back to work instead is “the biggest opportunity both to grow the British economy and deal with the most toxic issue in British politics,” he says.
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