Will Sunak’s sick note crackdown get Brits back to work?

Alongside the Prime Minister’s speech on welfare today, the Department for Work and Pensions quietly released updated forecasts. The numbers are stark: DWP expects there to be 3.96 million working-age claimants by 2028-29, a rise from 2.8 million in 2023-24. Meanwhile the number of working-age people receiving disability benefits is forecast to rise to 1.16 million – that’s 160,000 more claimants than was expected just six months ago. These are the numbers Rishi Sunak must grapple with as he sets out his welfare reform agenda. 

Back in 2020, then chancellor Rishi Sunak had days to design the furlough scheme. Once lockdown became mandatory in spring 2020, it was a race against the clock to figure out how to protect against mass unemployment while still keeping the incentive for people to return to work when it was legal to do.

Throughout Covid, furlough was envied by countries around the world, with even officials in the United States quietly wishing they could copy what Sunak had come up with.