While we're hearing the phrase ‘levelling up' much less frequently under the new Prime Minister compared to the last, the underlying ambition – to improve lives and life chances for everyone across the country – is key to ensuring the Government achieves its growth targets.
While some aspects of levelling up were more traditionally economic in focus, it was quite right that the net was cast wider because to achieve growth you need to create the right conditions for people to flourish. Health is wealth and the Levelling Up White Paper recognised this as two of the 12 missions explicitly related to improving wellbeing and life expectancy.
Ill health affects productivity in numerous ways from days lost to illness, injury, and even caring responsibilities for others that are unwell.
The current UK economic inactivity rate is estimated to be 21.7%, according to the ONS, which is 1.5 percentage points higher than before the coronavirus pandemic and is being driven by long-term sickness which is now at a record high. And the general sickness absence rate in the UK rose from a record low of 1.8% in 2020 to 2.2% in 2021 - the highest for more than a decade. As a result, an estimated 149.3 million working days were lost because of sickness or injury in the UK in 2021, equivalent to 4.6 days per worker. While cases of Covid-19 accounted for nearly one in four occurrences of sickness absence in 2021, there are other issues.
Recent labour market data has also shown that adults aged over 50 years are a key driver in the increase in economic inactivity. In May to July 2022 there were 386,096 more economically inactive adults aged 50 to 64 years than in the pre-pandemic period December 2019 to February 2020. Around 1 in 5 (18%) said they were currently on an NHS waiting list for medical treatment, while this rose to 35% for those who left their previous job for a health-related condition.
And the differences in health between the wealthiest and poorest is growing. Analysis by The Health Foundation shows that only 50% of people living in the most deprived 10% of local areas in England report good health by age 55–59. In the 10% least deprived of local areas the same proportion report poor health a whole 20 years later, at ages 75–79.
Whatever way you look at it, there is clearly a link between peoples' health and what is going on in the jobs market. And even if we were to get on top of the ever-increasing NHS backlog, people would still be getting ill far more than they should.
The newly created Integrated Care Systems (ICS) provide an opportunity for the NHS and local authorities to work even more closely together to help support people to stay healthy through taking an early intervention approach. Of course we must treat those who need it but we must also ask: 'Why are people getting so ill in the first place?'
Local authorities have a key role to play in helping to answer this question and act on it. Councils create the environments to keep communities healthy and can act as a crucial link between health and employment services.
Whilst chief executive at the London Borough of Ealing, as part of the West London Alliance we used the devolved work and health programme to support residents back into sustainable employment – helping people to overcome the barriers back into work from skills, to confidence, to their health. Local partners work closely with people through these issues in a way that central government or the NHS simply cannot.
And Greater Manchester Combined Authority, through initiatives such as its Working Well programme - an employment and health service to help people experiencing, or at risk of, long-term unemployment back in to work - further illustrates the potential that ICSs have to replicate these successes across the country. New research commissioned by The Health Foundation and the National Institute for Health and Care Research shows that there have been improvements in life expectancy in Greater Manchester since the region secured its trailblazing health devolution deal seven years ago.
This shows local authorities must be funded and empowered in ICSs to help nurture these ‘missing workers' back to good health and support them back into jobs.
If the principal focus of the new Prime Minister is economic growth then we cannot simply invest in physical infrastructure, we must also invest in social infrastructure and the nation's most valuable asset: its people. Doing so will result in creating a much happier, healthier, and wealthier nation.
Paul Najsarek is Solace spokesperson for Health & Social Care
@Solace_UK
MJ is the media partner for the Solace Summit, taking place in Birmingham on 11-13 October. See www.solace-summit.com to view the programme and book your place.
