To address the UK’s “sick leave culture,” Rishi Sunak is planning stricter regulations

To try to stop the number of Britons quitting their jobs permanently, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is considering tightening the regulations governing long-term sick leave.

As a result of an increase in long-term sickness and a higher proportion of students, working-age Britons are participating in the labour market at their lowest level since 2015. This is in contrast to other major, wealthy countries, where participation has been rising since 2020.

In snippets from a speech that is scheduled to be delivered later on Friday, Sunak expressed worry about the growing number of individuals who are out of work as a result of mental health issues.

“We need to be more ambitious about helping people back to work and more honest about the risk of over-medicalising the everyday challenges and worries of life,” he said.

Official data indicates that 9.4 million Britons between the ages of 16 and 64, or 22% of that age group, are neither jobless nor working, an increase from 8.55 million just before the epidemic. 206,000 of them are momentarily ill, while 2.8 million are chronically ill.

A quarter of those who lost their jobs to long-term illnesses last year were awaiting medical care, according to Britain’s budget watchdog. However, the watchdog also noted that reducing waiting lists to their length in 2015 could only result in the return of 25,000 jobs.

More than 50% of the patients who had been unwell for an extended period of time claimed to have “bad nerves, anxiety, or depression,” However, many of them believed this was a secondary ailment to their primary health issue.

According to Sunak’s office, doctors were too eager to write follow-up letters authorizing prolonged sick leave instead of offering advice on how an individual may return to work, which made it easier for patients to transition to long-term sickness benefits.

In an attempt to test the idea, Sunak said that he intended to give healthcare professionals who are charged with giving “an objective assessment of someone’s ability to work and the tailored support they need to do so” the assessment duties instead of family physicians.

“We don’t just need to change the sick note, we need to change the sick note culture, so the default becomes what work you can do – not what you can’t,” he said.