Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to collect or publish data on the number of people whose work capability is affected by migraine or related headache disorders.

The Office for National Statistics collects information on health conditions through the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is based on interviews with people resident in households in the United Kingdom. The LFS covers this in two relevant ways. It asks respondents about their general health, including any specific conditions and whether these are long-term conditions that limit their ability to work. It also asks about periods of absence from work on health grounds, including which health condition caused that absence.

The general health section of the survey contains a range of impairment categories, informed by the Government Statistical Service (GSS) Impairment harmonised standard. However, this list does not currently identify headache or migraine-related disorders as a separate category. Such conditions would most likely be categorised as “other health problems or disabilities”. Under the current survey design, it is therefore not possible to identify people whose long-term work-limiting illness is specifically related to headaches or migraines. The GSS Harmonisation team is currently reviewing the disability and impairment standards, including the review of disability data harmonised standards, which is available at the following link:

https://analysisfunction.civilservice.gov.uk/policy-store/review-of-disability-data-harmonised-standards-findings-from-phase-2-of-our-research/

Any recommendations from that review would be considered when assessing future updates to the impairment categories collected through the LFS.

Meanwhile, the section about periods of absence from work on health grounds includes an option for headaches and migraines. Analysis using this classification is published regularly as part of an article on Sickness absence in the UK labour market, which is available at the following link:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/sicknessabsenceinthelabourmarket

As the question is linked to specific periods of absence, it cannot be used to estimate the number of people who may be affected by migraine or headache related disorders. Instead, it looks at the number of days lost from work through different reasons for sickness absence, including headaches and migraines, along with the number of occurrences of sickness absence.