Downing Street hopes to expand the workforce through changes to the system of medical fitness notes issued by doctors.
Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government is considering changes to the 'fit note' system.
Sources told an internet media outlet that the Department for Work and Pensions is looking at options, which Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt will announce in his Autumn mini-budget.
"We are committed to working with the professional medical bodies to implement changes to improve the fit note and support better health and work conversations," a government spokesperson said.
'Fit notes' were brought in the final months of the last Labour government of Gordon Brown in 2010, replacing the old sickness note system.
They give general practitioners (GPs, the UK's family doctors) have the option of signing off patients as either "not fit for work" or "may be fit for work" — meaning they can negotiate a gradual or supported return to the workplace with their employers.
But in recent years the use of the second option has dropped to just six per cent, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ministers are reportedly concerned that trend is creating a chronic labour shortage that is crippling the economy. But a fit note also entitles workers to government sickness benefits, costing the exchequer billions ever year.
With a general election expected in 2024 or early 2025, the plan could expose the government to damaging accusations of trying to force the chronically ill and disabled back to work by cutting off their benefits.
The government is currently locked in a series of pay disputes with public-sector workers, including teachers, nurses, junior hospital doctors and now senior medical consultants in the National Health Service (NHS), who are set to strike on July 20 and 21.
Hunt has signalled a return to the austerity of the 2010s amid the energy and inflationary crisis — fuelled by sanctions on Russia — and flat economic growth.
In January, Sunak pledged to cut inflation — then running at over 10 per cent — by half, reduce the national debt, grow the economy to create new jobs, cut NHS waiting lists that grew during the COVID-19 pandemic and stop the trafficking of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants across the English Channel in dangerous small boats. But the PM has failed to keep those promises.