Alison McGovern says UK was unusual in not seeing employment rise after the pandemicAlison McGovern, the employment minister, said this morning she still has not decided who she will vote on teh assisted dying private member’s bill on Friday. MPs have a free vote.Explaining her dilemma, McGovern said:I haven’t decided how I’m going to vote. I’ve listened to my constituents who have been so kind and so generous to share with me their experiences, and I want to listen to my colleagues in the debate in full and decide how to vote.”I think it’s so important that people are able to have a good death and that families feel that their loved one was able to die in the most peaceful way possible in accordance with their views, but I haven’t decided on this issue.McGovern said it was good that people are more open about their mental health and she refused to blame people for not working on mental health grounds. Some commentators, and politicians, argue that conditions that were once “normal”, like anxiety, have now been medicalised, and that this partly explains why the number of people off work sick has risen. McGovern did not argue this. She told Times Radio:I think that it’s a good thing that people are able to be more open about mental health conditions in work, and that we understand more about how people’s mental ill health can affect them in work.I don’t think having a go at people and blaming them is the right approach.I think it’s definitely the case that we will help work be more sustainable for everybody, if we can take a broad approach to our mental wellbeing.Exactly. That’s the culture we need to change.McGovern said that Britain was unusual internationally in not seeing employment rise again after Covid. She said:If you look at those international statistics, what you see is that post-pandemic almost all of the countries around the world except us recovered in employment terms. The employment rate did increase, people did go back to work.That didn’t happen in Britain, something is different, and the level of sickness that we’re experiencing as a country is really high.McGovern declined to say how much she expected the welfare reforms to save the taxpayer.She said job centres should be more attractive to employers. She told the Today programme:Only one in six of our employers really thinks about using a job centre. That is not OK because it means that the public employment service that’s supposed to be there to support our businesses is failing.She confirmed that sanctions would apply to young people who do not take up offers of education, employment or training. But whereas Conservative ministers were normally eager to talk up sanctions, McGovern wasn’t. On the Today programme, she stressed that most young people would want to accept what was offered, and that sanctions already operate in the system. She said:When good help is offered, it is taken up, that is normally what happens. Of course, people will always think of that small minority […] people who are not interested, they don’t want to do it …There are rules in the system. Those rules have got to be made to work to make sure that if you take out in the form of social security, you have to do your part of the bargain. Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/nov/26/keir-starmer-labour-tory-jobs-plan-latest-politics-news-live
Author : Andrew Sparrow
Publish date : 2024-11-26 10:13:17
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
Blaming people for poor mental health not part of Labour’s jobs plan, says minister – UK politics live
