Tackling unemployment linked to long-term illness could unlock economic growth that is “hiding in plain sight”, according to former John Lewis chair Sir Charlie Mayfield, who has recruited more than 250 of the UK’s biggest employers to a taskforce aimed at preventing people dropping out of work due to ill-health.
The Get Britain Working taskforce includes British Airways, Tesco, Royal Mail, Sainsbury’s, EDF Energy, and Currys, along with several government departments and 10 mayoral authorities including London and Manchester. Official figures put the cost of the issue at £212bn a year.
“Sir Charlie Mayfield's taskforce of 250+ employers aims to cut £212bn cost of long-term sickness, with pressure mounting on incoming PM Andy Burnham.”
Sir Charlie told the BBC that too many employees are left in the dark when signed off sick. “I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who said: ‘I was signed off work for three months, or six months, and I never had any contact with my employer at all.’ That’s not because the employer is a bad person. It’s because we’ve got a situation at the minute where people don’t talk to each other when they really need to.”
The companies signed up will track sickness absence, return-to-work outcomes, and disability participation, which the government said would make workplace health performance visible for the first time. But some employers have previously said tax rises mean many firms cannot afford to invest, while others have warned against pushing ill people into work.
Sir Charlie’s push comes as pressure grows on Andy Burnham, widely expected to become prime minister later this month, to reduce the UK’s welfare bill. Government figures show total welfare spending in Great Britain is forecast to be 23.6% of total government spending in the 2025-26 financial year. “Fixing these problems at the fundamental level could make a really big contribution to getting this economy working better – for employers, for employees, for the taxpayer, for all of us,” Sir Charlie said.
He said he could not see why Burnham would not back the plans, given Burnham’s emphasis on “good growth”. “If this isn’t good growth, I’m not sure what is, quite frankly,” he added. Getting people back into work who are currently not working due to ill-health would be a simple way of boosting the workforce. “You wouldn’t have had to build a single house, open a new channel of immigration, you wouldn’t have to wait for a cohort of young people to join the workplace. This is basically growth hiding in plain sight.”
Sir Charlie insisted it was not a zero-sum game. “It’s not a question of employers win and employees lose and vice versa. Everybody can win.” Whether his taskforce can deliver that win, and help bring down a welfare bill that consumes nearly a quarter of government spending, remains to be seen.