Fit for Work Scheme

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Luce, on initiating this debate and I echo his call and that of other noble Lords for the benefits of the Fit for Work scheme to become more widely known. It really is mad that this great network of provision has been set up at great expense but that so many of the people who should know about it, especially GPs, do not make use of it.

I was so glad that my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester and the noble Lord, Lord Fink, both mentioned people with mental health problems. As the noble Lord said, they are often the primary cause of people being away from work for a long period, but I am sure we all know that many people who have chronic pain or another serious condition also have mental health problems that need to be addressed. I ask the Minister: what training do the occupational health advisers in the scheme have in identifying the mental health aspects of a person’s absence from work and in signposting those people towards treatment that will help them overcome it?

I will concentrate my brief remarks on the issue of chronic pain. As we have heard, 8 million adults report chronic pain that is moderate to severely disabling, such that it prevents them working or living a normal life day to day. But many more people live with lesser levels of chronic pain. The incidence is, understandably, much higher in the older age groups. However, few of those people are likely to be in work and are therefore not affected by the Fit for Work programme that we are debating. However, it often prevents them volunteering in the way that they would like—and we all know how important older people are in that capacity. Most charities would fall apart without them.

In the working-age group, one of the conditions that produces chronic pain is fibromyalgia. I know something about this because a member of my family suffers from it. It is incurable and variable. She had such a level of pain and stiffness as to make it impossible for her to carry on with a job in the public service that she very much enjoyed. Eventually she was forced to take early retirement, which penalised her financially until she reached pensionable age. I know that her employer was very sorry to lose her, and I wonder whether she might have been able to carry on if the Fit for Work programme had been available at the time.

However, the rules of Fit for Work, as I understand them, are such that you are not eligible unless you have been, or are likely to be, absent from work for four weeks. I happen to know that my relative, although she suffered a lot of pain at work, did not have long periods of absence. But in the end, she found it just too difficult and retired early. I suspect that many people like her soldier on with a stiff upper lip, taking stronger and stronger painkillers, perhaps performing well below their capacity and not enjoying life at all. In many cases the employer, too, will suffer from their reduced productivity. I wonder whether more people could be helped if the scope of the programme were expanded to help people stay in work, rather than just to return to work from sick leave. Back pain is so common that I would be very surprised if there were not hundreds of thousands of people working below their full capacity because of it.

My family member worked in the public service and did not have an occupational health department to turn to. The Fit for Work programme fills that gap and is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses that often do not have the resources that are available to big corporates. But the point must be made that public service workers often do not have that, either, because they are scattered in smaller units around the country.

Occupational health professionals can often identify the obstacles that prevent a person returning to work or working at full capacity, and can avert the need for them to leave their job. Indeed, I suspect that these professionals would have a lot more clout when negotiating with employers about reasonable adjustments that could be made than the employee herself or himself. It would seem sensible and desirable that, just as reasonable adjustments must be made for workers with a disability, employers should also be prepared to make reasonable adjustments to help people with chronic pain retain their job and help the employer retain an experienced worker.

I am afraid my remarks have gone somewhat wider than the Fit for Work programme, but I think what I am calling for would also achieve some of the Government’s objectives in setting up the scheme—for example, helping workers, improving productivity and increasing the tax take. I wonder therefore whether the Minister can tell me what action the Government are taking to widen the net and provide more help to a broader group of workers who are living with chronic pain but who keep calm and carry on in the good old British fashion.