Nearly everyone who gets signed off work for feeling “a little bit depressed” is classified as incapable of work, according to a senior government minister, as Rishi Sunak prepares to announce a new drive to get sick people back into employment.
Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, said on Friday morning that 94% of people who were signed off by their GP with minor mental health problems were listed as unable to work, contributing to what the prime minister will say is a “sicknote culture”.
Sunak is due to give a speech on Friday morning in which he will argue too many people are out of work with long-term sickness, in part because doctors risk “over-medicalising” normal worries by diagnosing them as mental health conditions.
Stride told Sky News: “If you go to the GP and say you are feeling a little bit depressed, and you’re signed off, in 94% of occasions, a box is ticked that says you’re not capable of work whatsoever.
“What we want to do is change the system so that that individual will be referred to – the government is setting up something called Work Well – where they will get both the healthcare support they need, but also a work coach who will be involved to either help them stay in work if they are in employment, or to help them get into work if they’re not.”
Ministers have become concerned in recent months about the rising numbers of people signed off work with long-term illness.
The number of people who are economically inactive due to health reasons has risen from about 2 million before the pandemic to 2.8 million today, while more than 10% of people in their 20s and early 30s say they are disabled because of mental health.
Experts blame the surge in mental health conditions on a range of factors, including the trauma of the pandemic, the rise in social media use among young children and underfunded mental health provision. Ministers however believe doctors are part of the problem because of their tendency to list minor conditions as serious illness.
Stride has previously come under fire for claiming that doctors over-medicalise conditions that in the past would have been seen as part of the “ups and downs of life”.
Sunak will say on Friday: “We don’t just need to change the sicknote, we need to change the sicknote culture so the default becomes what work you can do – not what you can’t.”
The prime minister will change the “fit note” system introduced by Labour in 2010 to reduce the reliance on GPs to issue the notes. He will say he wants to see notes issued by “specialist work and health professionals who have the dedicated time to provide an objective assessment of someone’s ability to work”.
Ministers changed the law last year to allow fit notes to be issued by any doctor, nurse, pharmacist, physiotherapist or occupational therapist in addition to GPs, who have traditionally overseen the system.
No 10 would not clarify on Thursday night whether the government was planning to widen the criteria further to allow non-medical professionals to issue or change fit notes as well.
“Building on the pilots we’ve already started, we’re going to design a new system where people have easy and rapid access to specialised work and health support to help them back to work from the very first fit note conversation,” Sunak will say.
