North worst hit by long-term illness charges in Tory job failure – high 10 areas

Tory Levelling Up boasts have been uncovered as hole as evaluation reveals northern areas are worst hit by hovering charges of long-term illness.

In a speech in Blackpool, Labour‘s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner will warn that Red Wall seats within the North and the Midlands had been handled as a “bargaining chip to get into power and tossed aside”. The Shadow Levelling Up Secretary will level to how the highest ten locations with the most individuals out of the workforce due to long-term illness are virtually all within the North of England.

More than 2.6 million individuals shouldn’t have jobs due to well being issues, based on the Office for National Statistics. The report quantity comes after 491,433 adults have been added to the official complete within the three months from May to July.

Official figures present Blackpool ranks second worst for the proportion of individuals out of labor resulting from ailing well being (50.6%), with 10,500 individuals affected by long-term well being issues out of 20,800 economically inactive. Stoke-on-Trent was the worst affected the place 18,300 weren’t employed resulting from illness out of 35,600 economically inactive individuals (51.4%).

St Helens, in Merseyside, (46.7%), Barnsley (42.5%) in Yorkshire, and North East Lincolnshire (41.5%) have been additionally badly affected. Peterborough (39%) is the one space outdoors of the North of England to make the highest 10 worst affected areas.

Ms Rayner is predicted to inform Labour’s North West Conference that Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement “lifted the lid on 13 years of Conservative economic failure”. She stated “Blackpool has been overlooked within the chilly by the Conservatives, together with the remainder of the Red Wall.

“These communities have been forgotten by this Government, used as a bargaining chip to get onto power, and tossed aside at the first opportunity. From their ivory tower in Whitehall, the Conservatives’ top-down approach to levelling up has been to rubber stamp each region with a flat-pack regeneration project and say job-done. A few micro-managed pots of money, dished out from the centre, won’t touch the sides.”

The Chancellor outlined plans for more severe sanctions and harsher measures for people on out-of-work disability benefits in a bid to slash the Government’s welfare bill. But Labour warned problems with getting people back into work would persist due to failure to tackle the root causes.

A Government spokesperson said: “We are taking the long-term decisions to cut health waiting lists and help everyone access the health and financial benefits of work, and inactivity has already fallen by nearly 300,000 since the pandemic peak.

“Last week we announced our Back to Work plan, which will help up to 1.1 million disabled people, people with long-term health conditions or the long-term unemployed to look for and stay in work. To speed up access to treatment for hundreds of thousands of patients, we have also invested £1.5 billion into surgical hubs across the country.”

Areas worst affected by long-term sickness

1. Stoke-on-Trent: 18,300 out of 35,600 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (51.4 per cent).
2. Blackpool: 10,500 of 20,800 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (50.6 per cent).
3. St. Helens: 10,300 of 22,000 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (46.7 per cent).
4. Barnsley: 17,000 of 40,400 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (42.5 per cent).
5. North East Lincolnshire: 9,800 of 23,500 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (41.5 per cent).
6. South Tyneside: 11,100 of 27,500 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (40.5 per cent).
7. Stockton-on-Tees: 11,800 of 29,900 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (39.3 per cent).
8. Peterborough: 9,200 of 23,500 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (39.0 per cent).
9. Rotherham: 15,900 of 40,900 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (38.9 per cent).
10. Halton: 6,600 of 17,100 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (38.4 per cent).