A young person signed off work today with anxiety could lose £1 million in lifetime earnings if they never go back.
That’s not support. It’s a trap we have to end now.
Today we
@InstituteGC are calling for an emergency handbrake on the UK’s welfare system - not wholesale reform which govt is rightly committing to and building over time - but something that can be done now to slow the near 1,000 people a day going onto health-related benefits.
At its core is a simple idea: introduce a category of “non-work-limiting conditions” - these are conditions which evidence shows do not hinder your ability to work - indeed work may actually be beneficial. For claimants with those conditions, the *default* becomes best-in-class support rather than cash benefits.
We can and must pull this lever now, directing savings into actual help.
The politics of welfare reform can be poisonous but I am confident in this measure. People need support, not the existence of their conditions questioned.
We also need it as a country. Britain *is not* an outlier when it comes to increased mental health diagnoses but we are an outlier when it comes to people with those conditions going on to benefits.