Rising job losses due to rising rates of long-term illness have made the UK the ‘sick man of Europe’ and are costing the government £5bn (nearly €6bn) a year in lost tax revenue.
According to the latest research from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) expert group, there are 900,000 more Britons inactive (neither working nor looking for work) than at the start of the pandemic, with a direct impact on access to disability benefits.
“If trends continue, illness-related inactivity will rise from the current 2.8 million to 4.3 million,” estimates the IPPR’s Health and Wealth Commission, which includes Andy Burnham, Mayor of Manchester and former Health Secretary, and Lord James Bethell, former Conservative Health Minister.
This problem is at the root of some of the biggest challenges facing the UK economy, particularly weak growth and low productivity.
Better health would save the National Health Service more than €21 billion a year by the mid-2030s, improve regional equality and boost pay, according to the report published by the think tank on Tuesday. The committee therefore warns that resolving the health crisis is “the single most important remedy our economy needs for faster growth”.
The IPPR’s findings are similar to those of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which suggests that improving citizens’ health would reduce a debt burden that, if trends do not change, is set to increase. 270% of GDP in the mid-2070s.
In a previous estimate focusing on rising claims for long-term sickness and disability benefits, the OBR estimated that the combined impact of lost workers and rising benefit bills is costing the state almost £18bn a year.
“We are lagging behind our peers in health, the number of people with chronic conditions is increasing and people are spending more of their lives in poor health,” the report says. It’s true. G7 countries have returned to higher levels of participation than before the pandemic, but not in the UK, where the participation rate of the working-age population is still a full percentage point lower than in 2019.
Five tips: from the polluter tax to the new health index
Health Secretary Wes Streeting shared the report’s findings and assured that “we will not build a healthy economy without a healthy society.” The text proposes five keys to reverse the situation, the pillar of which is to move towards a preventive health system:
- Tax at polluters like tobacco, alcohol and junk food companies, to raise nearly 12 billion euros per year during this parliamentary year to finance new health plans.
- Establish “health and prosperity improvement zones” inspired by clean air zones and rebuild swimming pool and green space infrastructure.
- Promote a “right to try” for recipients of health or disability benefits, a kind of commitment signed by these people to “try” to work without risk to their welfare situation.
- Reshape the management of health centers, with a one-stop shop for diagnosis, primary care, mental health and public health and with an emphasis on prevention.
- Create a new health index that, like GDP, provides insight into how the country’s health is changing.
