British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Friday the government would look to tighten rules for long-term sick leave in a bid to reverse a rise in the number of Britons who have permanently dropped out of the workforce.

Labour force participation among working-age Britons is its lowest since 2015, mainly due to a rise in long-term illness and a greater number of students, in contrast to other large, rich nations which have seen increased participation since 2020.

With his eyes firmly on a national election later this year, which polls show he is expected to lose, Sunak sought to appeal to core Conservative voters by warning the current welfare bill was fiscally unsustainable, and arguing that a ‘sicknote culture’ around mental health needed to be reined in.

  • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    38·
    2 months ago

    Jeez, it sure be great if the UK could leverage large numbers of people in Europe willing and able to work and to relocate and pay taxes. Seems like it would be a good idea to have as few barriers to that as possible. If a country did have such a relationship with its neighbors, I’d even go so far as to say it would be quite stupid to dismantle it.

    • peg@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      2 months ago

      It would also be good if the sick people could get treated. Unfortunately, the current government don’t think finding the NHS is worth it.

      • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        2 months ago

        Didn’t you read the article? They’re all just malingerers who are maybe a little blue! They need a good American style slap in the face and to get sent back to work! Chop chop and cheery-oh!

      • nogooduser@lemmy.worldEnglish
        81·
        2 months ago

        My wife is off with long term mental health issues and the treatment that she gets is shit (except our GP who was amazing and probably saved her life)

        You can’t be in a queue for treatment while being treated. So if the current treatment has been determined to not be working to improve things then you stop that treatment and go into a queue that’s at least three months for the next treatment. Even if the treatment that you were having was helping you stay relatively stable and stopping it would be bad.

        Also, if your treatment is a fixed term thing that comes to an end at a known time you have to wait until it ends before joining another queue.

        We moved house which meant that we had to stop treatment and go into another queue. Eighteen months later and we’re still in the queue and realising that the shit service we were getting before was pretty good in comparison.