How could the benefits system be changed in order to get more people back to work?
Monday 18 November 2024
At 3pm on Tuesday 19 November, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, as part of its short inquiry on the relationship between the welfare system and long-term sickness, will hear evidence from:
- Prof. Ben Geiger, Professor of Social Science and Health, King’s College London
- Prof. Jonathan Portes, Professor of Economics and Public Policy, King’s College London.
This evidence session, which is open to the public, will be held in Committee Room 4 of the House of Lords. It will also be streamed live and on demand on Parliament TV.
Topics the committee is likely to cover in this session include:
- Impact long-term sickness has on the economy and the cost of failure to remedy the problem.
- What has been driving the increase in long-term sickness rates.
- Reliability of official statistics.
- How changing conditionality in the benefits system has changed individuals’ incentives to work over the years.
- Effectiveness and fairness of benefits assessments from the perspectives of the individual and the state.
More about the Economic inactivity: welfare and long-term sickness inquiry
As a follow up to its 2022 inquiry into economic inactivity, the committee is carrying out a short inquiry on the relationship between the welfare system and long-term sickness in Great Britain.
Rates of economic inactivity – measured as a proportion of people of working age – fell steadily from 2012, reaching an all-time low of 20.7 per cent in early 2020. However, the COVID-19 pandemic saw a sudden and dramatic reversal of this trend with rates of long-term sickness becoming an increasingly important factor as the pandemic wore on.
The committee is seeking to understand the impact, if any, that changes in the benefits system have had on trends in long-term sickness and inactivity. It will hear views on what is being done in this area, and what should be done, to mitigate elevated levels of long-term sickness-related inactivity and the associated rising costs of welfare.