18 October 2004 - Johnson urges GPs to help end the "sick-note culture"
Doctors were today urged to join the Government’s efforts to help people stay in or get back into work when they suffer sickness or injury.
As latest figures show the total number on incapacity benefits may have peaked. Work and Pensions Secretary Alan Johnson addressed the Royal Society of Medicine “Pathways to Work: Enabling Rehabilitation” two-day conference:
"While we must provide security for those who cannot work, increasingly doctors agree that signing some people off as long-term sick is not always the best way to deal with their health problems. For people who are able to work again, a job can itself be an important step in the road to recovery and rehabilitation.
"Rather than rest being the best remedy for back pain, for example, research now shows it can actually delay recovery and make things worse. Advising patients to stay active can help them get back to work and on with their life.
"The forthcoming White Paper on public health will recognise the beneficial role some work can have in helping people recover from illnesses or disease. And it will emphasise the damaging effects of being out of work – urging the NHS to see return to work as the norm.”
Nine out of ten people who go onto Incapacity Benefit (IB) want to get back into employment but research shows that the longer they are on the benefit the longer they are likely to be stuck on it. Mr Johnson also hailed early evidence from the Government’s Pathways to Work initiative which is helping people on IB to get back to work.
"Our early evidence shows that given the right support most people claiming Incapacity Benefits can be helped back to work. We are already starting to see very encouraging evidence that more people are leaving benefit in Pathways to Work pilot areas compared to the rest of the country. The number of people on IB getting jobs nationally has risen and in Pathways areas the success rate is double the national average.
"Now we've brought down unemployment to a thirty year low and have half a million vacancies in the economy there's no reason for all this talent and potential to go to waste."
Notes for editors
- Periods of inactivity can damage mental and physical health – suicide rates are 35 times higher in long term unemployed then employed.
- Pathways to Work is being piloted in Bridgend, Derbyshire, Renfrewshire, East Lancashire, Essex, Gateshead & South Tyneside and Somerset, about 10 per cent of the national Incapacity Benefit caseload.
- It includes a series of compulsory interviews early in a new claim for IB with a skilled personal adviser and a package of support including innovative joint DWP/NHS rehabilitation programmes and a £40 a week return to work credit that makes work pay. Many people already on IB have volunteered to benefit from this support back to work.
- The latest figures on Incapacity Benefit show a small fall for only the second time since records began. Over the last two decades the number of people on IB had trebled.
- Mr Johnson was speaking to an audience of nearly 200 made up of GPs, qualified doctors, psychiatrists, occupational health and other medical experts.
- This month the Government extended the Disability Discrimination Act to 600,000 disabled workers and 7 million jobs. Both the draft Disability Discrimination Bill and Age Discrimination legislation will help increase the opportunities for work so that for those who want to work the jobs are available.
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