Labour’s welfare chief Liz Kendall said the ex-John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield is examining how best to support sick and disabled people back to work
Work and Pensions Secretary Kendall has suggested the government could look at reforming the sick note process.
Labour’s welfare chief said the ex-John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield is examining how best to support sick and disabled people back to work. He has been tasked by ministers to publish an independent review in the autumn. Speaking on Thursday, the Work and Pensions Secretary said Sir Charlie “will be looking at issues like the fit note and what more we can do there.”
“Too many people are being written off rather than actually being provided with help and support,” Ms Kendall added. I went with [Health Secretary] Wes Streeting to see some brilliant work that we’re doing jointly, where GPS, instead of writing people a fit note, are actually referring people to employment support. It’s already starting to make a big difference.”
The Cabinet minister also failed to rule out future cuts to benefits after last week’s controversial decision to slash £4.8billion from sickness and disability benefits. Ms Kendall insisted she cannot “write a forever budget”.
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She said: “We’ve already set out our plans. I set them out to the House of Commons, and they were set out in the Spring Statement last week.
“I’m not going to write a forever budget it’s not my job to write a forever budget, but we’ve set out a big reform form and I do think that we need to get sickness and disability benefits on, on a more sustainable building, we end up the benefit reforms that we want to make and this is the work support that we’re going to offer, and together that is a, a big change.”
It came as Ms Kendall appeared in Barnsley yesterday to unveil the first of nine “trailblazer” programmes to help tackle inactivity – backed by £18million in funding.
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The Department for Work and Pensions said in the coming year the scheme will work with over 7,000 people and help up to 3,000 people into jobs or to stay in their roles. Ms Kendall said the scheme will help people’s health needs, including physiotherapy, so people can stay in work and mental health support such as talking therapies.
She said: “For too long, whole areas of the UK have been written off and deprived of investment. We are turning the tide on this – as we believe in the potential of every single person across our country and that they deserve to benefit from the security and dignity that good work affords.
“This is why we’re investing £125 million into nine local areas to get Britain back to health and back to work – with our new approach making it quicker and easier for people to access the support they need to stay in work if they have a health condition or return to work.
“South Yorkshire is the first to kick off their innovative plans – backed by £18 million – and we will be launching more areas in the coming weeks as we put more money in people’s pockets, boost living standards and Get Britain Working under our Plan for Change.”
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