The Labour leader paid a visit to Siemens’ Three Bridges Traincare Facility in Crawley to find out about the company’s tailored health support to keep employees in work.
Joined at the factory by shadow secretary of state for work and pensions Liz Kendall, Sir Keir met with workers to discuss Labour’s plans to help Britain's 2.8 million long-term sick get back to work.
Labour said the number of people off work due to long-term sickness reached a record high on recent data. Millions of people are left languishing due to the unprecedented NHS backlog, a failing mental health service and failing employment support tied up in red tape ridden job centres.
The party said its measures to ‘tackle the NHS backlog’ would include scrapping the non-dom tax 'loophole' to fund two million more operations, scans, and appointments a year and double the number of NHS scanners ‘to diagnose patients earlier’.
They would also ‘remove box ticking and reform job centres’ to ‘support people who could work’.
During his visit, Sir Keir discussed a number of issues in Sussex – including the A27, NHS wait times, homelessness and plans for a second runway at Gatwick Airport.
A27
Sir Keir said he would have a ‘proper plan for roads and infrastructure’ – none more so than the A27.
"I’ve driven on that road,” he said. “People are fed up with a government that chops and changes all the time.
“We would bring a proper strategy and make sure what we say will happen, gets done and on time. That will be a massive relief to everyone who knows this problem all too well.”
This comes after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told Sussex World last month that congestion along the A27 between Adur and Chichester is something that is ‘consistently raised in Parliament as being an issue’.
NHS wait times
Hospital and GP wait times also came up in conversation. TV presenter Piers Morgan told Rishi Sunak that his mother experienced a ‘scene out of a war zone' when she was taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton in recent months.