June 2023

 

Let’s fix the UK’s broken sick pay system

Dear Secretary of State

We welcome the Government's efforts to create a strong and thriving economy in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and cost-of-living crisis. Good work improves health and wellbeing across people's lives and protects against social exclusion. 

But without a healthy workforce who are supported when they get ill, it will be difficult to achieve the aims of the recent Back to Work budget. Nearly two million people like cleaners, carers and parents juggling childcare, or multiple jobs, are slipping through the cracks and get no sick pay at all. 

An estimated 6 million people get just £109 a week in statutory sick pay, and lose three days’ pay if ill. Workers are encouraged to either leave employment or go back to work before they are fully better. The strain of coping with illness coupled with the financial hit can also exacerbate mental health problems and can tip people into a mental health crisis. The result is widening health inequalities. 

An increasing number of people in the UK population are living with multiple long-term conditions, such as chronic pain, diabetes or mental health problems. Sick pay should play a role in supporting people with MLTCs to take time away from work when they need it. Fixing the UK’s broken sick pay system would improve the chances of disabled people and those with long-term health conditions to stay in work. This would protect our NHS and benefit the wider economy. Ultimately, it would save lives. 

Our sick pay system lags behind the rest of Europe. To come into line with international standards, It would benefit from the following reforms:

• Abolishing the earnings threshold for Statutory Sick Pay
• Making Statutory Sick Pay payable from the first day of sickness
• Increasing Statutory Sick Pay to be in line with a worker’s wages up to the real living wage
• Developing a flexible model for Statutory Sick Pay which allows for a phased return to work and income protection for workers

Enacting these reforms would safeguard the health of workers and the wider population and help people lead happy, healthy productive working lives for longer, a shared goal for all of us. It would also benefit the wider economy.

We welcome the opportunity to work with you and the respective teams in the Department of Health and Social Care and Department for Work and Pensions to make the necessary reforms a reality. 

 

Yours Sincerely, 

 

Amanda Walters, Director, Safe Sick Pay campaign

Andy Bell, CEO, Centre for Mental Health

Barbara Reichwein, Programme Director, Impact on Urban Health

Conor D'Arcy, Interim CEO, Money and Mental Health Policy Institute

Diane Lightfoot, CEO, Business Disability Forum

Dr Jim McManus, President of the Association of Directors of Public Health.

Jo Bibby, Director of Health at the Health Foundation

Mark Hodgkinson, Chief Executive, Scope

Mark Koziol, Chairman, Pharmacists’ Defence Association

Rachel Kirby-Rider, Chief Executive, Young Lives vs Cancer

Dr Ruth Owen OBE, CEO, Leonard Cheshire Disability

Dr Sarah Hughes, CEO, MIND