Counting The Cost of "Sick Note" Culture

Dame Carol Black has been commissioned by the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions to advise on how to improve the health of those in work and reduce the number claiming sickness benefits.

Last week, the Government announced that from 2010 all those claiming incapacity benefit, currently 2.6 million, would have to undergo tests to prove that they are unfit. The Government's welfare reform adviser, David Freud, believes 1.9 million are claiming the benefit unnecessarily.

Recommendations in Dame Carol's report will include a large-scale advertising campaign to promote the benefits of a life of work to young people, some of whom come from homes where no one has been employed for generations.

The report will also recommend that health and well-being should be reported in company accounts and that "case managers" should work in GPs' surgeries to help patients deal with other problems such as debts, stress and childcare. It will also advocate that sick notes be replaced by an electronic "fit note", to stop doctors signing people off work.Instead GPs would have to tell employers what tasks their employees are capable of performing, a move already supported by Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary.

Dame Carol's investigations into ill health reveal the economic scale of the problem, some 175million working days are lost each year, costing the economy £100billion in lost productivity, benefits and taxes. The largest cost to the economy through ill health and disability comes in
lost production, £63 billion annually.

Dame Carol said: "We cannot go on as we are. There are difficult and challenging messages for everyone, whether they are politicians, healthcare professionals, employers, unions or individuals...We must act now to build on the emerging consensus around a new approach to health and work in Britain."