With 2.8 million people in the UK economically inactive due to long-term sickness, the government has published a White Paper setting out plans to get people back to work by improving their health and employability.

The White Paper, Get Britain Working, sets out a new approach backed by £240 million of investment.

The root causes of people not working will be addressed with a joined-up system of help and support.

Long-term sickness is causing a serious economic drag for the UK, driving a rising benefits bill and leading to companies experiencing recruitment issues.

Lack of training is also having an impact, with nine million adults lacking the basic skills they need to get on and one in eight young people not in education.

In the report, the ministers presenting it – chancellor Rachel Reeves, secretary of state for work and pensions, Liz Kendall, Bridget Phillipson, secretary of state for education and Wes Streeting, secretary of state for health and social care say: "Behind these statistics are human stories played out time and again across the country. Young people with mental health problems, waiting for treatment, or lacking the basic qualifications they need to get a job and kick-start their career. People in their 50s and 60s struggling with chronic pain, such as bad joints, with women often caring for elderly relatives, who have huge experience to offer employers but far too few opportunities. The school-leaver let down because employment support is not designed to help them seize today’s opportunities."

The goal is an 80 per cent employment rate – which translates as attracting an additional two million people into the workforce – and Get Britain Working says radical reform is needed to achieve this goal.

The government says it wants everyone to have the opportunity of secure, rewarding and fulfilling work and that a big part of this involves getting people more healthy.

Driving this will be a new independent review of the role of UK employers in promoting healthy and inclusive workplaces that will aim to prevent people becoming unwell at work and promote good, healthy workplaces, while also undertaking early intervention for sickness absences.

The workplace wellness review will run until Q2 2025 and involve engagement with employers, employees, trade unions, health experts, disabled people and those with health conditions. It will complement the government’s recently announced 'Make Work Pay' reforms, which will tackle job insecurity and expand flexible working.

There will also be a Green Paper published in spring 2025.

Tackling waiting lists for medical treatment is also on the agenda.

"This is not only a mission for the whole government, it also needs genuine partnership with and between, the new jobs and careers service, Mayors and councils, trade unions, private, voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations, the NHS, employers and schools, colleges and universities," says the white paper. "This is how, together, we can build a healthier, wealthier nation - driving up employment and opportunity, skills and productivity – while driving down the benefit bill."

Liz Terry, editor of HCM said: "We welcome this broad-ranging initiative from the government to improve workplace wellbeing and the prosperity of the nation, however, it's a failure of our lobbying as a sector that the words 'exercise', 'physical activity' and 'lifestyle' are not mentioned once in the Get Britain Working White Paper.

"When the government thinks about how to improve the productivity of the nation, we want to health and fitness sector to be top of mind.

"Our sector has had significant success in supporting people to get back to work through programmes such as the excellent MSK Hubs initiative led by UK Active and it's unfortunate that there's no reference to this programme and its potential in the white paper.

“The physical activity sector also has a huge role to play in supporting people in improving their mental health, with exercise proven to be as effective as medication at controlling mild to moderate depression and yet the government departments concerned have not considered the physical activity sector in laying out their plans," said Terry.

“During the upcoming consultation period for Get Britain Working, the physical activity sector must mobilise to communicate the many ways in which operators across public and private sectors can contribute to this drive to transform the prosperity of the nation.

“In opposition, Labour’s Kim Leadbeater produced a groundbreaking report called Healthier Britain looking at how all government departments could function in a joined-up way to deliver the benefits of physical activity across all portfolios, however, these ideas have not yet made the transition from proposal to policy and so this work remains on the shelf,” she said.

"We have a new government and so all the great work done lobbying the previous administration has been lost and we need to get back on the horse and start to build bridges with teams across the new government.

"This isn't just something we can assign to our trade and lobbying organisations and quangos, while we all sit back and expect them to move mountains on our behalf, this needs to be a sector-wide movement from the grass roots upwards," said Terry.

"If you're an operator, host your local MP or minister for the day, give them an assessment and a workout and show them what it's all about. If you're doing special programming, invite them to come and see what you're doing. Write to relevant government departments and invite decision-makers and their families along to your events. It's time to love-bomb the people in power right across the sector, so we raise awareness of the great work being done and support the work of our trade associations and quangos. We want our work to be a regular topic of conversation among MPs and ministers in Whitehall."