PM targets 'sicknote culture' in key speech

PRIME Minister David Cameron was today due to promise to end Britain's "sicknote culture" in a keynote speech outlining the need to overhaul welfare completely.

A review will be carried out into sick leave by Dame Carol Black, the government's national director for health and work, and David Frost, the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce.

Mr Cameron was due to complain that the reforms put in place six decades have seen the country lose its way, with five million people receiving out-of-work benefits.

He was set to say that the "collective culture of responsibility - taken for granted 60 years ago - has in many ways been lost. You see it in the people who go off sick when they could work, or the people who refuse job offer after job offer".

But he was also expected to turn his attention to the sicknote culture, arguing that the route to many leaving work starts by claiming to be sick.

He was set to say: "Half the people who end up on Employment and Support Allowance each year start by being signed off sick from work.

"We simply have to get to grips with the sicknote culture that means a short spell of sickness absence can far too easily become a gradual slide to a life of long-term benefit dependency."