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Why preventing long-term sickness in the UK is an economic necessity
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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But did I say that? Did I really? That seems like a misunderstanding of what I said.
The last Labour government did a lot of good in the NHS. Correct. ๐.
Specifically on long term sickness and getting people back to work, however, I don't recall them having solved the issues. In fact there was a lot of news about people being better off out of work rather than in work. Hence the Tory attempt at UC to give people "purpose". That was the whole thing with Ian Duncan Smith, he didn't see how paying people to stay at home long term sick was better for them than giving them work opportunities.
So whilst I agree Labour and Conservative records are vastly different, neither have solved the issues of long term sickness have they?
That doesn't really line up with new Labour achieving (at the time) record levels of employment, nor does it line up with the data on the amount of people claiming sickness absence: source (ONS)
As you can see, it fell from a rate of 3% in 1997 to 2.2% in 2010. It never increased under Labour.
Now, in fairness, it did drop to 1.8% for the Tories, but once COVID hit, the backlogs created for the NHS (in significant part due to the deterioration of the NHS), we have been unable to bounce back quickly.
The data also shows 184 million days were lost in 1997, which labour got down to 132 million in 2010. It remained stagnant under the Tories, then ramped up after Covid.
Seems to me like Labour were massively successful in reducing sickness leave.
So coming back to this, tbh (to me) that sounds like it could be the usual bashing of benefits "scroungers". The data doesn't back it up, people just thought Labour's generous benefits was making everyone be lazy, facts be damned.