A new government work, health and disability strategy aimed at ‘improving lives’ will do nothing to reduce the enormous toll from work-related ill-health, the TUC has said. 

TUC head of safety Hugh Robertson said it is an important area to get right, with only 1 in 8 UK workers having access to an occupational physician and 2 million people suffering from a work-related condition. The strategy, ‘Improving lives: The future of work, health and disability’, is billed as the government’s vision for a ten-year programme of reform. But, says Robertson, it falls way short and is just “a rehash of existing policies, a few general promises and virtually no practical concrete proposals.” 

He said there is nothing there to end the “dreadful experiences” that have seen people with disabilities hounded off benefits. Nor is there a single measure to improve access to occupational health services. “Meanwhile the government’s last big idea, the Fit for Work Service, which they hoped would help employers to access services when a person was ill for over a month, is to close after less than three years of operation,” says Robertson. “This is hardly surprising given how little was done to promote and support the service.” He adds: “Despite the claim that prevention is a priority, there are no new proposals on preventing people becoming ill through work. Instead we have a mention of the role of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on dealing with stress through the Stress Management Standards. Yet everything it says that it is going to do is already part of the HSE’s work programme. So once again we have nothing at all new on stopping people becoming ill through work.”

Robertson concludes the strategy “is, to say the least, very disappointing, and does not really address any of the practical problems around occupational health provision or access to rehabilitation… To stop work making people ill we need better, safer jobs that give us good working conditions, decent pay, security and respect. Also, when we get ill we need access to good quality healthcare and support to get us back to work. This ’10-year vision” does nothing to help prevent the 27 million sick days that people have to take because their work makes them ill, or help them get better once they are ill.”