The UK will still have some of the worst protections for unwell people in the developed world despite the government’s new bill on employment rights, leaving 8.3 million contracted workers with the equivalent of as little as £3 an hour.
Campaigners are calling on the government to go further on sick pay and make rates more liveable as the Employment Rights Bill is put to a vote in parliament next week.
Currently, around one in four workers in the UK – around 7 million people – are only entitled to receive statutory sick pay (SSP) instead of enhanced sick pay from their employers.
SSP amounts to a fixed rate of just £116.75 per week, or £467 per month, for eligible workers.
Dr Matt Padley from Loughborough University warns that the current rate of statutory sick pay is “not enough to live on” and says the knock-on effects are numerous.
“Anyone having to rely on SSP for any length of time is likely to see a substantial drop in their income, and if they are unable to return to work for several months, the gap between income and what’s needed to live with dignity will grow,” the social policy researcher told The Independent.
“At the same time, cost-of-living pressures continue and the rate of sick pay – already very low – will fall further and further short of meeting basic material needs.”
The government announced it is extending sick pay to workers earning under £123 a week from day one of their illness. Staff will be paid 80 per cent of their average weekly earning or £116.75 statutory sick pay, whichever is lowest.
While this will mean an extra 1.3 million people will be eligible for the statutory sick pay rate under the changes in the Employment Rights Bill, 8.3 million people in the UK will still receive far less than the living or even minimum wage if they fall sick.
For someone usually working 35 hours per week, statutory sick pay equates to just £3.33 per hour. For those working closer to 40 hours per week, this would be just £2.91 per hour.
Danny Hine-Berry, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in 2022, said the rate of sick pay – just £96 per week at the time – was not enough to survive.
Mr Hine-Berry told The Independent: “It left me in a lot of financial difficulty. And when you’re going through something like that, you should be able to focus on getting better. But instead, I had kind of all these worries and stress about money on top of my physical health problems.”
Analysis by complaint group the Compensation Experts found the UK ranked 40th out of 42 European countries when it came to statutory sick pay rates paid by employers.
The UK’s current statutory sick pay is just over a quarter of the minimum weekly wage for a full-time worker, and a third of the take-home minimum pay of £378.50.
This will increase to £118.75 per week from April, falling behind levels of inflation.
Meanwhile, in almost all European countries, the minimum sick pay expected from employers covers more than 50 per cent of the existing salary, with 100 per cent of salary being paid for sick leave in Iceland, Norway and Luxembourg. The statutory amount of just 28 weeks of sick pay is also lower than most other European countries.
For these workers receiving only SSP in the UK, a short-term illness can present immediate financial losses, and long-term sickness can be financially devastating.
“Faced with this reality, workers may have little choice but to return to work sooner than is healthy, with potentially longer-term impacts on their health and ability to work, and with broader consequences for welfare spending,” said Dr Padley.
It comes after The Independent revealed more than 1,000 sick and disabled benefit claimants died while waiting to receive vital payments last year.
The poor level of sick pay, which covers closer to one in three people in the North East, leaves cancer patients struggling to pay bills.
Alan Barton was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2023 and took three months off for operations on a tumour. He later found out his condition was terminal.
The statutory sick pay rate was just a fifth of what he was previously taking home each month as an engineer, which was a source of stress during treatment.
“There were definitely times we were having to count pennies,” he said.
An analysis by Loughborough University, the Safe Sick Pay campaign, and The Independent has estimated that a higher number of people without full sick pay are concentrated in areas which already have higher levels of deprivation.
Around 161,000 workers in Hampshire and 160,000 workers in Essex are estimated to be without full sick pay and are only entitled to the basic rate set by SSP.
Meanwhile, in areas of London, more people benefit from enhanced sick pay from their employers.
Mr Hine-Berry was just 23 years old when he was diagnosed and had been working in retail at the same company for six years. But when he fell sick, he was shocked to find out that he would only receive full pay for two weeks.
In order to treat his cancer, Mr Hine-Berry would need to undergo radiotherapy five days a week at a hospital 20 miles away, meaning there was no chance he could work. But his finances were slashed to less than a third due to basic sick pay rates.
“It affected my mental health quite badly, I’d say,” he said.
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If it wasn’t for the financial support of his sister and partner, in addition to grants from Young Lives vs Cancer, Mr Hine-Berry said he doesn’t know how he would have coped.
In the end, Mr Hine-Berry was advised that it would be better to quit his job and apply for sick benefits from the government.
He added: “I think it should be down to the government to make sure that sick pay is at least in line with the minimum wage. If it’s left to the individual employers, there’s too much risk.”
A government spokesperson said: “We want to ensure the safety net of sick pay is available to those who need it the most. That’s why for the first time we will deliver statutory sick pay for up to 1.3 million of the lowest earners who previously received nothing, and ensure employees have the right to payments from the first day they are ill.
“These landmark reforms, as part of the Employment Rights Bill, will support employees to stay in work, raise living standards and create opportunities as we deliver on our plan to make work pay for all.”
