Sunak is accused of “harmful” rhetoric amid plans to remove sick note responsibility from GPs

The UK prime minister has announced a consultation on reforms to the disability benefit system, which could see the ability to issue sick notes—referred to as fit notes—removed from GPs and assigned to “specialist work and health professionals.”1

In a speech on 19 April Rishi Sunak said that he wanted to completely remove benefits from people who had been unemployed long term and would not accept a job, as part of his “crackdown” on benefit fraud. He added that, while he did not want to “dismiss or downplay” mental ill health, he wanted to be “honest about the risk of overmedicalisation of everyday challenges and worries of …