Like the John Lewis Partnership he used to run, Sir Charlie Mayfield, who has just completed the government’s ‘Keep Britain Working’ review, comes across as terribly nice and civilised. It’s just a shame he can’t quite bring himself to put the boot in and deal properly with the problem of mass worklessness he correctly identifies. Had the job been given to a more ruthless business operator – perhaps someone from Amazon, Aldi or one of the other businesses which is steadily devouring John Lewis’s lunch – government might actually have a hope of a workable solution.
Mayfield all but ignores the real problem: it has become far too easy to claim out-of-work benefits
Mayfield is not wrong in his diagnosis. The UK economy is being dragged down by an epidemic of worklessness. Compared with 2019 there are an extra 800,000 people out of work for health-related reasons. On current trends, there will be another 600,000 by 2030. Particular concerning is that 190,000 of those extra people signed off on the sick are aged between 16 and 34. If they do not start their careers now, they may well find themselves settling into a life of unemployment. A 22-year-old who falls out of the workplace, Mayfield calculates, will miss out on £1 million worth of lifetime earnings.
So far, so good. But this is where Mayfield starts to get a bit wishy-washy, a bit too restrained and safe, a bit too pastelly, a bit too John Lewis. Mayfield calls for a ‘fundamental shift from a model where health at work is largely left to the individual and the NHS, to one where it becomes a shared responsibility between employers, employees and health services.’ Employers must spend more on keeping their employees happy, but ‘employees, too, have responsibilities’; they need to appreciate that ‘staying connected to work supports recovery and resilience’.
They certainly need to do that, but what about a kick up the backside, too? Alas, Mayfield doesn’t seem to do kicks up the backside. He therefore all but ignores the real problem: it has become far too easy to claim out of work benefits. Before the pandemic, anyone claiming to be too unwell to work usually had to present themselves in person to be assessed for their capability to work. That has gone: most work capability assessments are now conducted over the phone, or online. It has become far too easy to qualify for benefits on the strength of minor mental health issues such as anxiety. There is no guarantee that the claimants are actually in the country, let alone too ill to work. They may not even exist, like the 6,000 fake identities used by a Bulgarian gang to steal £53 million from the UK benefits system before they were eventually caught.
A government which really cared could reverse the growth in people on out-of-work benefits very quickly indeed. It is not as if there is shortage of jobs; unlike the early 1980s when we had mass unemployment caused by the decline of heavy industry, many employers are crying out for workers, and are forced to import migrant labour instead of the Britons who should be doing the work. We could end workshy culture in an instant by making sure that people presented themselves for a proper work capability assessment and, if they pass, appointing them to a job. If they refuse, they should not receive a bean – a bed in a homeless hostel and a soup kitchen would be the only other help available.
Such a system was in fact tried in the last year of John Major’s government when two pilot projects were set up, one on Humberside and one in Kent, where the long-term unemployed were put on compulsory work placements. Of the 6,800 in the scheme, 920 ended up getting permanent jobs, but another 3,100 simply stopped claiming. Many of them very likely already did have work and had been claiming fraudulently. Some, like the fake Bulgarians, might not even have existed.
That is how to do it. But we are not going to get there with Mayfield’s review.
Comments