If you follow Stripy Lightbulb CIC’s work, you’ll know that we have been raising concerns about the rise in long‑term sickness and the impact on the welfare bill for years. We submitted detailed evidence to the Plan for Jobs and Employment Inquiry, outlining how M.E/C.F.S and Long COVID were already driving a surge in people too sick to work. We explained the coding failures, the diagnostic gaps, and the systemic misunderstandings that would inevitably distort employment data. Yet today, the welfare debate is being framed as though the rise in sickness is a sudden, inexplicable development. Politicians are speaking as if this moment arrived out of nowhere, and the public is being left with the impression that the system is buckling because people have simply chosen not to work. Do the UK public know that the increase in people now out of work due to long-term sickness was entirely predictable? We’re not sure they are because what we have been telling anyone who will listen for years has never been mentioned in mainstream media, despite our best efforts.
Where are Government advisers getting their information from? What information sources are they using to brief Ministers? Stripy Lightbulb CIC regularly attends Government meetings, roundtables, and committees on welfare, disability, and employment. We provide evidence‑based information grounded in lived experience and research. We contribute to inquiries, answer questions, we have consistently showed up for at least the past 5 years. However, when we look at the current welfare narrative coming from most political parties, it is painfully clear that the information shaping policy is not coming from the organisations who specialise in these issues.
If the Government, and political parties, are not listening to the people who understand the problem, how can they possibly hope to solve it?
On Friday, we released a press statement about the welfare reform debate, a debate that is growing louder by the day, yet somehow continues to overlook the very evidence that could explain why, as politicians keep claiming, the system is under such strain. We are grateful to BusinessMole.com for publishing our press release, but this issue is bigger than one article on one online platform. The welfare debate affects millions of people, and the public deserves to understand the real drivers behind the rise in long‑term sickness. We need national coverage to give those directly impacted by this rhetoric the voice they deserve. Without national coverage, the conversation remains incomplete, conspiracy theories and misconceptions thrive, and the public are left with a narrative that blames individuals rather than acknowledging systemic failure on.
Quote from the press release,
“Politicians are acting shocked by rising welfare costs, but we warned them years ago. You can’t ignore a public‑health crisis and then feign surprise when it shows up in the welfare bill.”
Stripy Lightbulb CIC will continue to advocate, educate, and challenge misinformation where we find it, and will keep on attending committees, submitting evidence, and raising concerns. We will continue asking the questions that need to be asked, even when they are inconvenient, because our advocacy role is not to make policymakers comfortable, it is to make the truth impossible to overlook or deny. We owe that to the people we represent (the M.E./C.F.S. community), and we will keep going for as long as it takes.
