My only question with the signing would be whether we have enough midfield depth once Nørgaard converts to #9.

Louis Moholo-Moholo, 1940-2025. One of the giants of the South African jazz diaspora in the UK. RIP.

At £118.75 a week, low statutory sick pay is a real issue. One figure we didn’t include: households with a full-time worker spend £193 a week on essentials like food, housing, fuel and power. Even among lower income households, it’s £128. SSP doesn’t cover the basics.

I was staggered to learn just how much pay typically swings about from month-to-month, even for the steadily-employed c/o @mikebrewerecon.bsky.social @stephenpjenkin1.bsky.social @nyecominetti.bsky.social We're all on @voxeu.org setting out their findings cepr.org/voxeu/column...

It's a scandal. We cannot create reliefs like R&D tax relief. I's generous, vague, and impossible to police - a dangerous combination. Better to have narrowly focussed reliefs which are only available to a much smaller number of businesses doing really serious R&D.

Interesting piece on a hard topic – the risk of overdiagnosis in mental health and the need to respond to distress with care.

☕️Sunday morning read ☕️ Sacha Romanovitch, Chair of the @healthfoundation.bsky.social Commission For Healthier Working Lives has written in the @financialtimes.com about how to keep people with health conditions in employment. First 3 clicks are not paywalled!

This little bit of the OBR report is a very technocratic description of an almighty row between them and DWP....

Responding to today’s Spring Statement, our Chief Executive, Jennifer Dixon says the Chancellor's cuts risk compromising people's health, with changes to benefits that will leave many people worse off, in worse health and less able to return to work. Read our full response ⬇️ buff.ly/YZ6EXKJ

Genuinely serious, realistic appraisal of our current predicament from @anthonypainter.bsky.social. Highly recommended. anthonypainter.substack.com/p/brexterity...

As noted, cuts to health-related benefits risk worsening living standards and health. The case for reducing eligibility for PIP as a route to work doesn’t stand up - perhaps because a real answer would highlight the need for investment, while the government’s main aim is to say it’s spending less.

Mini flurry of new DWP reports yesterday: 1. Impact of extra Work Coach time on employment: www.gov.uk/government/p... 2. Estimates of lost output etc due to ill health preventing work www.gov.uk/government/s... 3. Data on durations on incapacity benefits. www.gov.uk/government/s...

This summarises today's Green Paper well: cuts are guaranteed while additional financial support is speculative. Cuts to PIP and UC-health will not be consulted on, so are almost certainly going to be scored by the OBR next week - but plans to compensate those who lose out are uncertain...

The rise in distress can be absolutely real and *at the same time* not (fully) explain why people are unable to work. For that, we need to also look at precarious work, broken education & a welfare system that only offers one way to describe your barriers to work: www.health.org.uk/features-and...

Overdiagnosis of mental disorders is making headlines again, this time thanks to Wes Streeting. But it is true? (thread) www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The government is right to try to 'de-risk' the journey into work for people on incapacity benefits, through the kind of 'right to try' they are trailing today Taken along with the plans to improve employment support announced last year, it could have formed a transformative agenda But... 1/3

Good to see this - it reflects one of seven recommendations from the @healthfoundation.bsky.social's Commission for #HealthierWorkingLives. The government must move beyond short-term fixes and invest in long-term support for work and health. More in the Commission’s final report:

As the government considers reforms and possible cuts to incapacity and disability support, we need a long-term vision for work and health – prioritising prevention and early support to help people stay in work and improve health.

Yesterday, a Government press release claimed the number of people “considered too sick to work” had "quadrupled" since the pandemic (a "383% rise"). This is incorrect. In fact, it’s not even close. It's more like 40%. This thread explains why 🧵1/7

New paper on supporting workers' health and access to better work. As part of a wider programme of research to inform the Commission for Healthier Working Lives led by @healthfoundation.bsky.social. learningandwork.org.uk/resources/re...

‘Good work and good health go hand in hand’ Minister Sir Stephen Timms welcomes the Commission for #HealthierWorkingLives

❓ Being told you should ‘act your age’, ‘slow down’ or ‘that’s ‘too young’ for you’. ❓ Becoming ‘unemployable’ in your 50s. ❓ Being told you’re 'surprisingly tech-savvy’ or ‘you shouldn’t wear that at your age'.

Important research published today on the work aspirations of DWP health & disability customers. Worth reading in full. Some of the testimony here is really important. www.gov.uk/government/p...

Great to see this report from @timewise.bsky.social. Better work design, including flexible working, has an important role to play in maintaining health and helping employers retain workers with health challenges. It's good to see the sector-specific insights, as they’re often overlooked.

Helpful new analysis from the team. Increasing mental health challenges are evident across a range of data sources, but it’s a complex picture. Dr Annie Irvine’s blog unpacks some of this complexity, which isn’t always recognised in the welfare system: www.health.org.uk/features-and...

Financial stress makes workers less productive.

Really looking forward to this discussion with a great mix of speakers. Do join us to hear how international approaches could help improve workforce health here in the UK.

New survey finds work-life balance is more important to workers than pay (in @theguardian.com today) But the UK has some of the weakest working time protections in the OECD (see chart) - we also have an above average % employees working v. long hours www.lancaster.ac.uk/media/lancas...

Fifty years after Keith Jarrett’s Köln concert, this programme tries to make sense of its enduring magic www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

A metaphor for economic policymaking in a small, open economy like Britain which I am very proud of. Feels apt to dust it off again. www.theguardian.com/books/2022/o...

Important New Year reading here, with this final report of a project exploring regional differences in the disability employment gap. Results show strong correlation between the size of the DEG and levels of economic deprivation across an area: well worth a deep dive into the data (see👇for more).

Great to see this report from the Work Foundation. Interesting findings on how important access to flexible working is for enabling people with health conditions stay in work.

Borrowing this chart from @jburnmurdoch.bsky.social to add a couple of points. Does the benefit system affect how people report *reasons* for economic inactivity in surveys? It's likely because there is evidence from cross national data that social & economic context influences responses. 1/n

Sharing my response to the #GetBritainWorking White Paper that I posted over on Linkedin in a thread. A cautious welcome: It positions the high numbers of people not working, or seeking work, for reasons of health and disability (notice I don’t use the term ‘inactive’?) as a key problem > 1/9

"Britain’s illness-related inactivity crisis looks increasingly like a mirage" - great piece www.ft.com/content/1409.... But @jburnmurdoch.bsky.social goes wrong towards the end... 🧵

📢New research! Investigating the case for not just more jobs but *better quality* jobs. Our IES report for the Commission for #HealthierWorkingLives finds that poor job quality threatens the health of the UK workforce. (1/2) bit.ly/3CH4uYB @employmentstudies.bsky.social

Good piece, and reflects much of what we covered in a pre-election @resfoundation.bsky.social report. Policy makers have been playing ‘Whack-a-Mole’: hitting standard rates of working-age benefits, and now some of that pressure is showing up as rising claims for health-related benefits.