All is not well: is the UK getting sicker?

The prime minister has denied that Britain is "three times sicker" than it was 10 years ago, after new figures showed a surge in the number of people signed off from work.

Rishi Sunak told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that while the number of people who are off work sick has tripled, he questioned what that statistic actually means. "Now do I think our country is three times sicker than it was a decade ago?" he said. "The answer is no."

But is the UK getting sicker, and if so, what can be done about it?

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What the papers said

Britain is "objectively sicker than it was a decade ago", said Prospect, as it noted that steady improvements in UK life expectancy "stalled" in 2012 and that the infant mortality rate rose every year between 2014 and 2017, and again from 2020 to 2021.

Recalling that the Conservatives' austerity cuts began in 2010, the magazine argued that "more people are being signed off sick because today's Britain is a sick society" and "it is sick due to consistent, relentless underfunding".

The UK now has a "sick note economy" that is "costing billions", said Personnel Today. Since 2020, the number of days lost to sickness absence in the UK has been "steadily rising", reported the trade magazine, and the "average Brit" now takes almost eight days off sick every year.

There are "just short of 3 million people off work due to chronic illness and long-term sickness", it said, meaning around 5% of the entire country is now on long-term sick leave.

The stats keep coming: more than half a million young people in the UK said they are out of work due to long-term illness, reported The Guardian last month – a 44% increase in just four years. Experts blame a "growing mental health crisis" among those aged 16-34 for the rise, said the paper.

In an Office for National Statistics survey, mental health problems – including depression, bad nerves and anxiety – were "most prevalent" in the youngest age group, affecting more than a third of the 16-34-year-olds (36%) who were out of work due to long-term illness.

So the "dismal truth" is that we are "a sicker country", argued The Guardian's columnist Polly Toynbee, but the problem might not originate in the head. People's mental health "is indeed bad", Dr Annie Irvine, of King’s College London’s ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health, told Toynbee, "but that's often the result of their lives, rather than a recognised mental illness", particularly after years of "vanished services that might have helped sooner".

Problems in the health service are part of the issue, said another expert. Last September, England's top emergency doctor said Britain's hospitals are "making people sicker" as NHS waiting lists reached a record 7.7 million. Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told The Times that "long delays" for patients waiting for a bed are "making people sicker".

What next?

There are hopes that progress on tackling obesity could help, said The Daily Telegraph. British workers are "sicker than at any point in decades", and although "there is still no consensus" on why this is, "expanding waistlines are likely a factor".

After "decades of rising obesity", the arrival of weight-loss jabs such as Wegovy and diabetes drugs such as Ozempic "promise a possible step change", it said.

A "meaningful reduction in obesity and the number of people who are deemed to be overweight would undeniably have benefits for the economy", it said, so if "skinny jabs" can "help stem the rise in waistlines, they will inevitably bring benefits to the labour market".

"Running and gardening clubs" will be used by Sunak's government "to get people on long-term sickness leave back into work", said The Independent.

Doctors, employers, job centres and social workers will be encouraged to suggest "therapy and life coaching", and "community activities such as jogging, singing, cooking or gardening" will also be offered through NHS "social prescribing" initiatives.

The work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride, and Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, told The Times they hope the new "wellness" scheme would get people back into the workforce, but they accepted that the scheme was not a "one size fits all" for all the long-term sick who might be capable of work.