• Football can prioritise sustainability by, at the very least, aligning the UK government’s Net Zero objectives.
• Following calls to ban gambling sponsors for the Premier League, research suggests extending that to ban fossil fuel advertisements at games.
• Government should mandate a model similar to the current Common Goal 1% initiative, where Premier League clubs could invest a minimum of 1% of gross revenue in grassroots adaptation.

The climate impact of football

The report Football and Climate Change was led by The University of Manchester and produced in partnership with Loughborough University and the University of Bristol. It details how the extreme carbon-intensity of modern football is neither accidental, nor inevitable.

Early estimates of the 2026 World Cup tournament put the total emission at around 9 million tons of CO₂, of which 7.7 million tons are linked to the air transport of fans and teams.

 The (un)sustainability of English football

 English football is increasingly bearing the brunt of climate change. Recent evidence suggests that a record amount of grass roots games are being called off due to excessive heat and/or flooding. Sport England estimate the cost of climate related damage to grassroots is £20 million and could amount to £510 million in the future.

Although the impacts at grass roots seems far apart from the elites of English football found in the Premier League down the English Football league (EFL) these impacts will inevitably affect the ‘future generation’ of English footballers.

This raises questions over the responsibility of elite football clubs in the here and now.

Football governance in the UK: policy recommendations

Although making football more globally sustainable is primarily a subject for FIFA, the Football Association (FA) has a role to play as a member of the organisation. Alongside the UK government, particularly the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Premier League and EFL, the FA can help shift English football in a more sustainable direction by ensuring regulation, commercial standards and infrastructure investment are aligned with the UK government’s net zero objectives.

Following the Football Governance Act 2025 and the establishment of the Independent Football Regulator (IFR), English football has a significant opportunity to implement change across the football pyramid. The Act defines sustainability largely through fan interests and the economic and social wellbeing of local communities, but the absence of a clear environmental remit is a missed opportunity that should be addressed through the following recommendations:

Recommendation 1 – Embed sustainability in regulation – the DCMS, FA and IFR should all prioritise sustainability by giving clubs minimum requirements on emissions, material requirements for games and waste reduction. These targets, at the very least, should be aligned with the broader UK government objectives of to reach 68% reduction by 2030 and net Zero by 2050, as detailed by the Commission on Climate Change (CCC).  Sustainability is central to the financial stability, systemic resilience and heritage preservation highlighted in the Football Governance Act. Governing bodies should recognise these links and stop treating them separately.

Recommendation 2 – Ban fossil fuel advertisements – Football should stop being used to advertise fossil fuel companies and should avoid normalising polluting sectors as prominent features of football. Much like the call to ban betting companies in the Premier League and EFL, we argue that any such ban should be extended to fossil fuel sectors.

Recommendation 3 – Focus on costs as well as revenue – Governing bodies need to recognise that sustainability measured are not a ‘cost’ nor do they disrupt the revenue generating capacity of football. The CCC estimates that sport contributed an estimated £20.7 to the UK in 2023. In a classic case of not investing being greater than investing raised in the Stern Review, clubs should consider the impacts of not adapting football to changing environmental conditions. At present, clubs too often seen any measures to make football a cost and afford to much emphasis to broadcasters. There will no greater disruption to the footballing calendar than flooding or extreme heat.

 Recommendation 4 – Fund grassroots adaptation – In grassroots football increased flooding is calling off more games. FIFA could take steps to help the next generation of footballers. Much like the current Common Goal 1% initiative, Premier League clubs could invest, a minimum of, 1% of gross revenue in grassroots adaptation. Additional revenue could be raised through fines levied on non-compliance with initiatives set out in recommendation 1.

Recommendation 5 – Co-ordinate delivery across government – we recommend the DCMS works alongside governing bodies and other government departments to facilitate sustainability in football. We would encourage the DCMS to work particularly with Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Department for Transport (DfT) to help football clubs make more sustainable choices. Measures should include investing in low carbon transport solutions for fans and teams to travel to games, for all energy required for match days to be sourced from renewable generation, for all waste produced from the events to be sustainability managed and for Premier League clubs to be brought into the UK’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Combined, the department could work alongside football to make sustainable an holistic approach across the energy, transport, waste, food and clothing requirements of the game. These targets should be aligned with the UK’s Net Zero objectives.

Combined, the departments could work alongside football to make sustainable and holistic approach across the energy, transport, waste, food and clothing requirements of the game.

These targets should be aligned with the UK’s Net Zero objectives.

• Quality of work in the rapidly expanding UK warehouse industry impacts hundreds of thousands of workers.
• Research shows that if policymakers want to improve implementation of the Employment Rights Act, four areas need to be considered: worker voice frameworks; performance management practices; worker representative support; and line manager development.
• Introducing collective bodies in sectors beyond social care could support workers and employers by improving voice, working conditions and training.

Employee voice and the UK warehouse industry

Employee voice concerns the way that people communicate their views to their employer and influence employment conditions.

Voice channels can include meetings with supervisors, team briefings, anonymous helplines, collective bargaining and negotiation, works councils, and the use of digital tools such as electronic surveys or apps.

Many lower paid workers are employed in the UK warehouse industry.  It offers low barriers to entry and is accessible to people from different backgrounds, including those who have been out of work. The latest ONS data showed that in 2023 there were almost 290,000 employees in warehousing and storage in the UK, which is more than three times the number in 2010.

This figure is set to expand given the demand for e-commerce. The industry has witnessed various hostile anti-union employer strategies, such as those reported at Amazon. It has also attracted significant debate on the nature of working conditions and how new technologies influence the future of work.

New research – worker experience

Led by researchers from the University of Manchester’s Work and Equalities Institute (in collaboration with researchers at Queen’s University Belfast), our research study examined worker experiences in the UK warehouse industry.

This involved interviews with workers and supervisors in a range of UK warehouses of different sizes (e.g., third party logistics, online retail, retail). The aim was to gauge the extent of worker voice and examine whether employers are creating an environment where workers at all levels and on different types of contracts (both permanent and temporary) feel comfortable speaking up about issues that matter to them.

The research findings 

Four key themes emerged from the study:

• Workers were far more likely to discuss individual/team-based voice channels rather than collective voice channels such as employee forums, health and safety committees, or trade unions. Workers may fear reprisals from management if they speak up about union voice. Most workers had access to informal and formal voice channels but reported having limited impact on decision-making at the organisational level. They may have been invited to offer suggestions and ideas on how processes could be improved, but they lacked influence over working conditions.

• Targets and real-time monitoring were often discussed, for example through handheld scanners, warehouse management systems, or voice picking systems. Workers were not necessarily opposed to explicit performance management targets, as long as they were perceived as reasonable, and failure to meet targets was dealt with fairly. We found that union reps, where recognised, could help communicate and clarify targets and monitoring. However, opportunities to shape or have a voice over performance management practices were very rare and these were usually determined by managers.

• There were examples of workers using voice channels to request how shift patterns were organised. However, for temporary and agency workers, the number of weekly working hours could vary and they were often informed via their phone, rather than face-to-face interactions.

• Temporary and agency workers reported that they fear that speaking up or joining a union will lead to contract termination, negatively impact their chances of securing a permanent contract, or affect their shift allocation. This lack of solidarity fragments the workforce and hinders collective representation.

Employer actions 

There are several actions that can be taken to enhance worker voice:

Firstly, the Employment Rights Act provides an opportunity for organisations to consider how they can begin working with unions or strengthen working relations with unions. Employers should consider how individual and collective channels can be combined, which could improve work experiences.

A second recommendation is that employers review the role of worker voice over performance targets. The study found that management practices of monitoring and surveillance were of critical concern to workers, yet they very rarely influenced these practices, including how they were rewarded for meeting or exceeding expectations. Involving workers in how their performance is evaluated can help organisations ensure fairness and improve retention.

Policy implications – good work versus actual experience

 The research highlights tensions between ‘good work’ policy objectives and lived worker experiences in warehouses.

If the Employment Rights Act aims to enhance job quality and working conditions, regulatory frameworks for strengthening worker voice are key.

Our research emphasises that any legal frameworks need to ensure that temporary and agency workers are able to speak up without detriment or retaliation. For example, government could establish sectoral-level negotiating bodies, to negotiate on issues such as pay, progression, working time, health and safety and training. ACAS (an independent impartial organisation for workers and businesses) could also introduce a new Code of Practice and guide on worker voice. Other potential options include introducing statutory works councils and/or worker directors on company boards.

Performance management and algorithmic management practices also influence workers experience of voice, fairness and autonomy, but they are rarely discussed explicitly in policy. Policymakers in the Department for Business and Trade and the Department for Work and Pensions should share guidance on how performance management practices relate to the Employment Rights Act and decent work policy agendas. Statutory voice frameworks could explicitly include performance management practices.

Finally, the findings show that effective enforcement of the Employment Rights Act will require social dialogue between employers, unions, charities and other civil society organisations. However, the reforms outlined in the Employment Rights Act also rely on front-line managers, whose role is often marginalised in UK policy debates. As the Employment Rights Act is implemented, government should consider how front-line managers can acquire capacity, development and influence to facilitate worker voice and work with worker representatives.

Most people would like to have a voice over workplace issues, with the intention that this leads to an improvement in working conditions. From an employer perspective, providing meaningful voice could improve retention, productivity and morale, while helping resolve day-to-day workplace issues.

Individual/team-based voice channels are widely implemented across the warehousing industry. The introduction of the Employment Rights Act provides an opportunity for employers to strengthen worker voice by combining individual voice channels with collective representation. To achieve this, policymakers could provide support for employers by introducing a sector-level body to provide specific guidance, templates for consultation, government- funded training and development programmes for employers, front-line managers and worker representatives.

• Underlying traits of a preventative model include averting illnesses before they happen and the earlier identification and management of chronic illness.
• Such a transition can only occur where consideration is given not just to genes but also the environment as a determinant of health.
• This places an importance on the availability of environmental data both to public health practitioners from an operational perspective and those who researching new methods of prevention.

Genes and the environment as determinants of health
Health outcomes are not solely determined by our genes but also by environmental factors. Non-communicable diseases are often caused by the interaction between genes and lifetime exposure to harm. Harmful exposure could be naturally occurring, such as radon gas, or result from human development, such as air pollution from burning fossil fuels, or through individual choice, such as a sedentary lifestyle, or through deprivation, such as mould in poor quality housing. An individual’s risk of developing a disease has two components: the baseline risk determined by their genes and additional risk caused by lifetime exposure to harms. The greater the exposure to those harms, the higher the risk of developing disease. This has been coined the “exposome”.

Disease prevention
Disease prevention falls into two categories; primary prevention which aims to stop problems developing in the first place by taking actions at population level that eliminate or reduce exposure to harm, and secondary prevention which aims for early detection so that intervention can be employed to stop or delay deterioration in health.

Methods of primary prevention might include the introduction of traffic calming measures in urban areas where there is poor air quality, to reduce pollution levels. For instance, in London, congestion pricing and ultra-low-emission zones have been introduced to reduce the prevalence of harmful pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and other particulate matter in the air, which has had health benefits for 5 million people living in outer London.

Active transportation, or infrastructure that encourages walking and cycling, is also an example of disease prevention. Research from The University of Manchester, considers pollution levels around schools, the impact of this on the health of children, and the importance of a community centred approach to active travel policies, so that commuters can use active travel methods to complete their journeys. By encouraging the take up of active travel, individuals will get the health benefit of more physical activity but also reduces air pollution from vehicles.

Access to urban green spaces. Parks, gardens, and green corridors within cities provide residents with spaces for recreation and relaxation and are known to be beneficial for good mental health.

The dominant method of secondary prevention is use of screening to identify those that have high exposure to harms such as air pollution or long-term exposure to irritants like those from smoking. Such screening, pioneered by The University of Manchester, is now transforming outcomes for patients with lung cancer, after researchers took screenings into communities in a bid to increase earlier detection and improve uptake in those most at risk. This improved detection three-fold compared to the international average.

Challenges with prevention
There are several challenges associated with prevention relating to harms caused by environmental factors.

Identification of needs
The genetic revolution has given us one half of the story through things such as the biobank sequencing. However, we need to better understand how genotypes interact with the environment. With progress and innovations being made in this area, this should become more plausible than in the past.

Competing priorities
In a system with constrained resources the key question is “where do you get the most improvement for your investment?” Answering this requires taking a holistic view of health and environment and considering the impact of policies that would traditionally sit outside of the health remit, like transport, on health outcomes. For example, if we want to reduce demand in doctors’ surgeries what impact would we have by changing traffic policies to reduce air pollution in areas with existing high levels of health deprivation.

Data fragmentation
Healthcare data, genetic sequencing data and environmental data exist in silos. We need to be able to link them quickly and easily to create a high-resolution picture of exposure and risk.

The role of the Digital Solutions Hub (DSH)
One of the key resources available for understanding the impact of the environment on health and prevention is the Digital Solutions Hub (DSH), which offers environmental data that can be linked to population-level health data. By leveraging the DSH, researchers can explore issues related to gene-environment interactions and their impact on health. This approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of how environmental context influences genetic predispositions to certain diseases. For example, air pollution is a known factor that affects lung health. By examining the interaction between genetic susceptibility and exposure to air pollution, we can gain a clearer picture of the underlying mechanisms that contribute to respiratory diseases.

To quantify the impact of lifetime exposure to environmental hazards, it is essential to undertake comprehensive population health studies that link health records, genetic data, and environmental exposures. These studies can provide valuable insights into the correlation and causation of environmental factors on health outcomes. The drive towards genomic health service announced in the NHS 10 year plan and the recently announced National Health Research Data Service if linked to the DSH would provide a unique capability to develop new insights into the environment-health-genome interaction.

The DSH will also be useful for those managing service delivery for the NHS, as healthcare providers will be able to monitor, in real-time, local air pollution levels on the Hub. In doing so, NHS trusts will be able to more effectively respond to incidences of poor air quality by ensuring more staff are put on shift for expected increases in admittance to A&E for respiratory problems and become more resilient to shocks and triggers.

Policy Recommendations
The government should invest in large scale population comprehensive health studies that link genetic data, health records, and environmental exposures. This will provide a robust evidence base for understanding gene-environment interactions. Policymakers should utilise resources like the Digital Solutions Hub to integrate and analyse data from multiple sources. This will enable more precise identification of environmental risk factors and their impact on health outcomes. Researchers and health practitioners should use the Unique Property Reference Number service to provide the link between an individual’s geolocation over time and their environmental exposure to begin to deduce the exposome. Policymakers should develop place-based prevention policies and programmes that enable the ‘shift left’ to prevention and are delivered digitally using linked environment-health-genomic data.

The relationship between genes, environment, and health is complex and multifaceted. By leveraging digital health data, investing in comprehensive studies, and implementing thoughtful prevention policies, we can create healthier communities and reduce the burden of disease. Policymakers must take a proactive approach to address environmental hazards and their impact on public health, ultimately leading to a healthier and more sustainable future for all. The DSH provides access to a rich data set that can be linked to population level health data to explore issues of correlation and causation around environment and health.

• The ban targets access, not the system producing the harm. Systems will continue to amplify content optimised for engagement for every user the ban does not reach.
• The Online Safety Act addresses risk but not incentives. Even where platforms comply with the Act and the ban, the business model that profits from harmful amplification remains intact.
• A Digital Harm Levy would close the gap. A tax calibrated to a Harmful Content Exposure Rate would make safer platform design economically rational, complementing the ban and the Act rather than replacing them.

The harm is engineered

Recommender systems decide which feeds a message enters, how prominently it appears, who sees it, and whether to push it further if early engagement is strong. None of these choices are forced by the content. They are the work of systems whose function is engagement, written into code and tuned on past data.

This matters because engagement and harm are correlated. Material that provokes outrage, fear, contempt, or in-group hostility tends to hold attention. Systems optimised for attention therefore amplify some kinds of speech more than others—at scale, repeatedly, and in personalised ways that compound over time.

The evidence is now substantial. The Internet Watch Foundation has documented a 26,362% year-on-year increase in photorealistic AI-generated child sexual abuse material. Despite age restrictions, an estimated 72% of children aged 8 to 12 bypass safety controls to access adult-tier platforms, where recommender systems routinely surface content on self-harm and disordered eating. Civil verdicts in the United States, including the Meta proceedings in New Mexico and the K.G.M. trial in Los Angeles, have begun to treat platform design itself as the proximate cause of harm to minors.

What the Ban does, and does not, do

The under-16 ban is the right response to part of the problem. Children are particularly vulnerable to engagement-driven amplification, and the evidence supporting protective intervention is strong. But the ban faces three limitations the policy debate should engage with directly.

First, enforcement. The same 72% bypass rate that justifies the ban also predicts its partial failure. Children who want access will find it through VPNs, family accounts, and the well-documented permeability of age-assurance systems. The eSafety Commissioner’s first compliance report found that “roughly 70% of children who had accounts before the ban retained access to at least one platform three months later, with no discernible reduction in cyberbullying or image-based abuse complaints from under-16 users.” Bypass rates thus remain high under enforcement. A ban that does not reach its target audience cannot eliminate the harm; it can move it to spaces where it is less visible.

Second, scope. The ban applies to children. It does not apply to the adults and older teenagers whom engagement-driven systems also harm, e.g., through coordinated harassment, ideological radicalisation, addictive use, and informational distortion.

Third, and most fundamentally, the incentive gap. The ban changes who can access social media. It does not change what social media is incentivised to do. Platforms will continue to operate the same recommender systems for every user the ban does not reach. Even where they fully comply with the ban and the Online Safety Act, the financial incentive to amplify harmful content remains intact, right up to the legal line.

These are not arguments against the ban. They are arguments for what must accompany it.

A Digital Harm Levy

Research at The University of Manchester proposes a Digital Harm Levy: a progressive tax on platforms calibrated to the rate at which their systems deliver harmful content to users—the Harmful Content Exposure Rate (HCER).

The HCER is the proportion of total user impressions on a platform that fall within harm categories defined by Ofcom. It measures what recommender systems actually deliver, not whether any particular item should be removed. A platform that reduces its HCER pays less. A platform that increases it pays more. The tax targets what economists call negative externalities, that is, the social cost the platform’s systems impose on third parties.

The levy is designed to complement the under-16 ban and the Online Safety Act, not replace them. Where the ban addresses access and the Act addresses specified harm categories, the levy addresses the residual externality through a continuous price. The three instruments do work the others cannot.

Crucially, the levy does not require platforms to remove content. To reduce their HCER, platforms can downrank harmful material, slow the spread of borderline content, redesign recommender systems, or invest in better user controls. The apt metaphor is throttling, not censorship.

Policy actions – and implementation

• Legislate a Digital Harm Levy alongside the under-16 ban. Introduce a progressive tax on digital platforms based on their Harmful Content Exposure Rate, targeting the systemic amplification of lawful-but-harmful content for all users.
• Build the auditing infrastructure. Mandate Ofcom to define auditable harm categories and work with standards bodies like the British Standards Institution and the Financial Reporting Council, to establish a methodology by which independent auditors can calculate the HCER from anonymised platform data.
• Phase implementation. Roll out the levy in three stages: definition of audit standards, a twelve-month pilot during which platforms report HCER data without financial penalty, and full enforcement integrated into the existing Digital Services Tax.

The ban makes certain online harms unreachable for children. A Digital Harm Levy would make them unprofitable for platforms. Speech would remain permitted and amplification ceases to be costless.

• A significant proportion of the estimated 215 billion items of flexible plastic packaging annually placed on the UK market will be collected and sorted for recycling by 2027.
• The UK remains ill-prepared to recycle flexible plastic packaging.
• There is an urgent need for a stronger strategic approach that prioritises the production and uptake of recycled feedstocks, halting the loss of infrastructural capacity and upscaling capabilities that makes sustainability pay.

The need for a stronger strategic approach

The collection, sorting and recycling of flexible plastic packaging across the UK has never been done before. Simpler Recycling thus presents an unprecedented challenge, which needs to be taken on as part of circular economy and net zero transitions.

Worryingly, however, rather than seeing an increase in recycling capacity, in line with the rollout of Simpler Recycling and other UK and EU policies that are driving higher demand for recycled feedstocks, the general trend is decline. In the UK, for example, more than 200,000 tonnes of plastic reprocessing capacity have disappeared since 2024. As a result, just when capacity is needed most, it is disappearing.

The loss of capacity is symptomatic of a wider lack of strategic thinking and planning concerning flexible plastic packaging recycling. The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, published in November 2025, says little to nothing specific on plastic packaging and plastics recycling. The publication of The Circular Economy Growth Plan has, moreover, been delayed. Whether this or other initiatives, including the recently launched All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sustainable Plastics, will deliver much-needed strategic clarity remains unclear.

What is clear is that the UK is in urgent need of a detailed and comprehensive strategy for UK flexible plastic packaging recycling.

Making sustainable end markets for flexible plastic packaging a reality

A multi-stakeholder impact and engagement research initiative, supported by the University of Manchester’s Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) and Henry Royce Institute, focused on what is needed to make sustainable end markets for UK flexible plastic packaging. Despite a diversity of voices in attendance from across the value chain, there was a surprising degree of agreement on the urgent need for a stronger strategic approach, focusing on three key priorities.

Priority 1: Favour the production and use of recycled feedstocks

Favouring the production and use of recycled feedstocks over virgin, fossil-fuel-based derivatives is a key priority. Firstly, this will give the recycling industry a much-needed boost. Secondly, it will help bring about sustainable end markets for recycled content. Over the shorter term, there is a strong justification to accept that it is better to get recycled content into a fuller range of commodities, which may not represent closed loop cycles (i.e., food-grade-to-food-grade packaging), than it is to see flexibles hit incinerators, landfill or export. This acceptance needs to be caveated with the longer-term strategic goal of getting recycled materials into closed-loop cycles based on the momentum of short-term shifts.

Priority 2: Stop the loss of recycling capacity and scale up capabilities

Stopping the contraction in UK recycling capacity and scaling up capabilities is another priority. This is crucial to the delivery of Priority 1 and therefore to making sure that recycled feedstocks are available to feed into a fuller range of commodities and end markets. The infrastructural scale up required needs to prioritise the national coordination of collection, sorting and reprocessing infrastructures. A strategically oriented, time-sensitive approach to the balance between mechanical and chemical recycling pathways needs to dovetail with this to maximise the potentials of flexibles recycling.

Priority 3: Make sustainability pay   

Making sure that it pays to recycle flexible plastic packaging is another strategic priority. This is key to Priority 2 and achieving the upscaling and coordination of UK recycling infrastructure required to deliver Priority 1 and therefore to producing recyclate (materials made from waste) needed to replace the use of virgin, fossil-fuel feedstocks. For too long, financial costs have proven prohibitive to socially, environmentally and economically sustainable investment in UK plastics recycling.

No time to waste – suggested policy pathways

The combination of UK waste policy, including Simpler Recycling, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

and the Plastic Packaging Tax (PPT), does not add up to a holistic strategic approach to flexible plastic packaging recycling. Such an approach is urgently needed to make sure that flexible plastic packaging that is set to be collected and sorted at scale for recycling is recycled.

As part of prioritising the fuller use of recycled content, to gain some much-needed industry momentum, a more ambitious approach to the use of recyclate and adherence to design for recyclability is recommended, following or even going further than that being pursued by the EU’s 2030 Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR).

To get fuller use of recycled content, renewed investment in the recycling industry and infrastructure is needed. It is recommended, in turn, that the £250-plus million generated through the PPT and a proportion of the £1.5 billion forecast to come with EPR be ring-fenced for such purposes. This approach needs to see spending spread and targeted to where it is needed most, not simply aimed at local collection and sorting, as per the current design of EPR. This spending spread could usefully see the use of low interest loans or subsidies for recycling plant investments or sector innovation and scale-up.

The use of low-interest loans or subsidies complements a third and final recommendation, which is to make sustainability pay. Policy further needs to address, in this regard, high operating costs, the challenges of competing with cheaper imports, and the more economically lucrative allure of exporting plastic waste, all of which dampen risk appetite for domestic investment.

If a greater strategic approach to flexible plastic packaging recycling does not materialise quickly, the UK looks set to disappoint on the promise of Simpler Recycling and related commitments to circular economy and net zero.

• By 2050 it is projected that summer rainfall is likely to drop by approximately 15% and summer river flows by roughly 45%, making droughts more frequent and severe.
• Recent droughts have caused significant losses to arable yields, with direct costs to UK food producers running into hundreds of millions of pounds.
• The Clean Water Bill (the Bill) must prioritise agriculture as a key part of our water system and economy by placing an explicit statutory duty on the regulator to ensure drought resilience and preparedness, with food security embedded as a key criterion.

Impacts of drought on UK agriculture and food security

The White Paper rightly acknowledges that England’s ageing water infrastructure is “struggling to cope”. However, there is little to no discussion about how drought affects, and will increasingly compromise, the capacity of England’s agricultural sector to produce food and ensure supply chain resilience.

By 2050 it is projected that  summer rainfall is likely to drop by approximately 15% and summer river flows by roughly 45%. Coupled with increasing volatility of rainfall and heatwaves, this will make droughts far more frequent and severe. In 2025, many regions entered winter with continuing drought conditions, with a continued dry spring meaning many farmers in the south and east of England are likely to face significant production challenges in the summer ahead at the same time as Peers in the House of Lords highlight an urgent need for the greater drought preparedness.

The agricultural consequences of these trends are already being felt. Our research shows to maintain current production levels, food processing infrastructure in eastern England may need to relocate northwards within the next decade, due to escalating drought pressures. Droughts in 2022 and subsequent years caused significant losses to arable yields, with direct costs to UK food producers running into hundreds of millions of pounds in 2025. Yet England’s regulatory framework offers farmers few options for adapting and responding to water scarcity: no tradeable water rights, no drought contingency allocation, and no financial safety net.

Where the White Paper falls short

The White Paper’s proposals have potential to deliver significant structural improvements in water management and policy in the UK. However, reforms fail to address several critical challenges related to how water is managed and governed within the agricultural sector.

Water rights

Our abstraction licensing system is over 50 years old with catchments across eastern and southern England – the most water scarce parts of the country – already chronically over-licensed or over-abstracted. The White Paper proposes moving abstraction regulation into the Environmental Permitting Regulations but says little about modernising the underlying allocation framework. Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin Authority operates a system of tradeable water entitlements with dynamic seasonal allocations that flex according to real-time storage and catchment conditions; several US states have introduced innovative tradable multi-year permit schemes that allow farmers flexibility to adapt and share water during times of scarcity. Our research demonstrates that flexible allocation systems substantially reduce economic and environmental costs of scarcity. Without comparable reforms, we cannot credibly claim to be building a climate resilient water system.

Monitoring

The White Paper has limited ambition when it comes to monitoring of water use, even though it is widely acknowledged that you cannot effectively manage what you don’t measure. For most abstraction licences, actual water use is rarely measured in real-time, and, within the agricultural sector, there is a significant reliance on self-reporting. Evidence shows that a lack of monitoring is a critical barrier to ensuring compliance and enforcement of water rights, particularly as pressures on scarce water supplies intensify. Our work on satellite-based monitoring shows that affordable, scalable technologies exist, with regulators and water managers in North America and southern Europe already using them to track agricultural water use and support efficient on-farm water management. Policymakers should be investing in such capabilities today, working in partnership with the farming sector, to ensure it is able to respond effectively to emerging water scarcity risks.

Framing

The White Paper rightly identifies agriculture as responsible for around 40% of river and groundwater pollution and commits to stronger enforcement of existing rules. This framing reduces farming entirely to a regulatory problem rather than a productive system that underpins national food security and is acutely vulnerable to water shortages. This matters for enforcement as well as resilience: water rights that cannot be practically exercised during drought create perverse incentives for illegal abstraction, undermining the very compliance framework the White Paper seeks to strengthen. The UK needs a firmer approach to enforcement of water rights with genuine financial and technical support for farmers to adapt and to mitigate risks posed by increasingly volatile and uncertain water supplies.

Water storage

The White Paper’s commitment to nine new reservoirs is welcome, but it reflects an approach that concentrates investment in centralised assets serving public water systems. This approach does not adequately address agricultural drought, which demands a complementary portfolio of distributed storage solutions, including on-farm storage, that can buffer irrigation demand against summer drought risks and reduce pressure on rivers and aquifers. Equally important, but entirely absent from the White Paper, is any framework for water sharing between farms and across catchments. Where individual holdings lack the land or capital for storage, collective infrastructure – shared reservoirs, irrigation districts, and water co-operatives – has proved effective in comparable agricultural systems in France, Spain, and Australia.

Recommendations

The Bill should give the new water regulator an explicit statutory objective to ensure drought resilience and preparedness, with food security and rural economic resilience embedded as a key criterion when evaluating and designing new systems of management and governance. Without this, water for farming will remain an afterthought in regulatory decision-making, leaving farmers and the UK’s food supply system critically exposed to drought and water scarcity.

The Bill should include provisions to fundamentally reform water rights and abstraction licensing. Dynamic seasonal allocations tied to real-time catchment conditions, transparent licence curtailment mechanisms for drought periods, and a framework for temporary water trading between agricultural users should be introduced. This could be supported by innovations in monitoring of water use and availability enabled by satellite remote sensing and other digital sensing technologies. This is the single most important structural reform the Bill could deliver for food security and farm sustainability.

Policymakers must pursue a comprehensive programme of water risk management and transfer for the agricultural sector – including regulatory support for distributed water storage and financial mechanisms such as index-based insurance and targeted grants for on-farm storage investment. These changes should be designed in tandem with a reformed abstraction licensing framework, with monitoring systems in place to ensure that seasonal and flexible abstraction rights are clearly defined and enforceable.

The government’s ambition for water reform is genuine and substantial. But a vision for water that treats agriculture as a pollution problem rather than a critical part of the food production system and rural economies risks building a regulatory architecture that is unprepared for the water challenges we will face in the coming decades. The Bill must prioritise agriculture as a key part of our water system and economy, without which food security and economic growth will suffer.

• The NERC Digital Solutions Hub (DSH) stands at the forefront of this data-led transformation.
• Central to this endeavour is the use of data: not just as a passive resource, but as an active driver of insight, accountability and innovation.
• By leveraging the power of spatial data and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the DSH provides a suite of tools and methodologies to support robust decision making, tackle environmental challenges and maximise the value of NERC’s and other UK data assets.

The Centrality of Data in Modern Decision Making 

The scope and scale of data available to contemporary decision makers has grown exponentially. Data now flows from a multitude of sources: satellites circling the Earth, sensors in urban infrastructure, user-generated content, and vast repositories of government and academic research. This wealth of information presents enormous opportunities, but only when harnessed effectively.  Sound decision making requires not just access to data, but the means to interpret it, integrate it with other evidence and apply it to real- world contexts.

Here, the DSH’s approach is instructive. By focusing on the collection, curation, and analysis of spatial data, it ensures that decisions are grounded in a detailed understanding of place, context, and change.

Driving Innovation 

The DSH is a flagship initiative of the Natural Environment Research Council, designed to transform the UK’s ability to generate, share, and apply environmental data. The programme’s objectives are ambitious: to break down barriers to data access, foster cross-sector collaboration, and unleash the potential of digital technologies in addressing key environmental and social challenges.

Among its primary contributions is the promotion of spatial data infrastructures, which bring together diverse datasets and make them available through intuitive, interoperable platforms. This has profound implications for decision making; empowering policymakers, planners, and researchers with the timely, high-quality evidence they need.

Enabling Evidence-Based Policy 

One of the most significant impacts of the programme is its ability to underpin evidence-based policy. Through the integration of spatial data and GIS, decision makers gain access to a rich tapestry of information on land use, biodiversity, climate change, human health, population dynamics and more. This enables the identification of trends, risks, and opportunities that might otherwise remain hidden.

For example, spatial data can illuminate patterns of urban expansion, highlight areas of environmental vulnerability, or support the targeting of resources to communities most in need. The capacity to visualise and map these factors, often in real time, greatly enhances the effectiveness of policy interventions.

Supporting Cross-Sector Collaboration 

The challenges facing society, from climate change to housing provision, cannot be solved by any one sector alone. The DSH recognises this, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange across government, academia, industry, and civil society. By providing shared access to spatial data and digital tools, it helps break down traditional silos and enables collective action.

Notably, the programme has supported a range of demonstration projects where data-driven decision making has delivered tangible benefits. These include urban flood mapping, climate change impacts on housing and communities, air pollution impacts on human health, habitat restoration planning, and infrastructure development, each underpinned by robust spatial analysis and stakeholder engagement.

The Power of Spatial Data, GIS and Mapping 

Spatial data, information about the location, shape, and relationships between physical features, lies at the heart of efforts to understand and manage complex systems. When combined with the analytical and visual capabilities of GIS, it becomes a transformative asset for decision support.

GIS enables users to layer multiple datasets, revealing how different factors interact across space and time. For instance, environmental managers can overlay maps of soil type, land cover and rainfall to assess flood risk, while public health officials can combine demographic and pollution data to identify at-risk populations. Such integrative analysis is crucial for holistic, system-wide decision making.

Scenario Planning and Forecasting 

Beyond describing the present, spatial data and GIS are invaluable for exploring possible futures. Decision makers can build scenarios, testing how different policies, investments, or events might shape outcomes, and use these insights to plan for resilience and sustainability. The DSH provides the data infrastructure and insight needed to support such forward-looking approaches.

Spatial Data in Action 

Consider the challenge of managing urban green spaces. Local authorities must balance competing demands for recreation, biodiversity, urban cooling, and new housing, often with limited resources. Through the DSH, councils can access up-to-date spatial datasets on land cover, public accessibility, and ecological value.

Using GIS, planners can map current provision, identify gaps, and model the impacts of proposed developments. This empowers them to make defensible, evidence-led decisions that reflect both community needs and long-term sustainability goals.

Challenges and Future Directions 

While the potential of data-driven decision making is immense, it is not without challenges. Data quality, interoperability, and metadata are critical to ensuring that data delivers public value. Poor or inconsistent metadata remains a major barrier to data discovery, reuse, and integration, even where datasets comply with established standards such as the UK Government Data Standards and the INSPIRE Regulations. The DSH is addressing this gap by building capability and promoting clearer, more consistent, and machine-readable metadata aligned with standards and applying the FAIR principles. Strengthening metadata quality, particularly around provenance, update frequency, uncertainty, and fitness for purpose would significantly enhance interoperability and support more effective, evidence-based decision-making across government.

Going forward, there is an urgent need to democratise access to spatial data and GIS tools so that communities, businesses, and policymakers can meaningfully participate in the data revolution. This requires coordinated action at national level, particularly from The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology for data standards, digital skills and infrastructure and The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for environmental data and public-sector geospatial assets, working with NERC and devolved and local government to reduce barriers to access and use. Targeted investment is needed in applied spatial data training, including core data literacy, metadata and data stewardship skills, and practical GIS and analytics capabilities for non-specialists across the public and third sectors. International examples such as national geospatial knowledge hubs and open geospatial communities (e.g. cross-sector geospatial networks in the Netherlands and Finland) demonstrate the value of sustained collaboration between government, academia, industry and civil society through online communities, regular practitioner forums and joint innovation programmes. The DSH contributes to this agenda by providing open platforms, shared tools, and collaborative networks that support skills development, knowledge exchange, and co-production between data providers and users, helping to translate spatial data into more inclusive and effective decision-making.

Conclusion 

The role of data in supporting decision making has never been more critical. Through initiatives like the DSH, the UK is laying the foundations for a more informed, agile, and resilient society. By harnessing the unique power of spatial data and GIS, we can better understand the world around us, anticipate future needs, and deliver policies and actions that are both effective and equitable.

As we look to the future, continued investment in data infrastructure, capacity building, and innovation will be essential. By doing so, we can ensure that data fulfils its promise as a driver of positive change across the environment, health, economy, and society.

• Research findings suggest that direct-to-consumer genetic (DNA) testing fundamentally alters the landscape of donor conception.
• Regulation should consider greater flexibility in donor conception arrangements and the importance of wider donor kinship networks.
• There is a shortfall in counselling provision for those involved in donor conception and legislation and policy in the UK should be updated to strengthen support structures.

Direct-to-Consumer genetic testing has changed the landscape fundamentally

Perhaps the most urgent issue is one that the original legislative framework could not have anticipated: the rise of direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTCGT). Services such as 23andMe have made it possible for anyone (donor-conceived people, donors, and wider relatives) to discover genetic connections outside of the official register run by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

The ConnecteDNA project, drawing on interviews with 101 donors, donor-conceived people and recipient parents, has documented the profound implications of this shift.

Donor-conceived people are discovering their ‘donor’ connections earlier than the law intended. The law that states that donor-conceived people can only access identifying information about their donor at age eighteen and this is being routinely bypassed by DTCGT. This does not necessarily mean the official system should be abandoned, but it does mean that current regulation urgently needs to be revisited.

Donors are being contacted by genetic relatives they did not know about or are matched with donor offspring who have not yet been told that they are donor conceived. This places people in a difficult position; donor conceived people may have knowledge that someone is donor conceived when that person does not know themselves, or donors might be contacted by donor offspring whilst not having told their own family that they were a donor. The emotional burden this can place on donor conceived people, donors and their families can be considerable and is largely unacknowledged.

Regulation needs to consider the implications of DTCGT and what support people need to manage these new connections.

Known donation deserves greater policy attention

The Curious Connections research, comprised of 88 interviews, maps the personal life impact of being a donor in the UK.

It showed that many donors experience a strong sense of affinity with their recipients. Egg donors, in particular, can feel connected with the mothers of donor-conceived children, even when they had never met.

For some donors, this led them to seek out ‘open’ or known donor arrangements, where they had an ongoing relationship with the recipient family. Interviews with both egg and sperm donors indicate that current models of identity-release donation do not work for everyone and rates of known donation are increasing. Hence, our research suggests that it is timely and important to consider regulatory changes that allow for more flexibility in terms of donor conception arrangements.

The wider family must be recognised

Our research consistently points to something that current policy largely overlooks: donation does not only affect donors and donor-conceived people. It affects the donors and donor conceived people’s own children, parents, and partners, and extended family, who may develop their own feelings of connection with those related to them through donor conception.

We recommend that legislation explicitly recognise this wider network of relationships. Practical measures could include opening the HFEA’s existing Donor Sibling Link, (which allows children conceived using the same donor, to apply to connect after they turn 18) to the raised children of donors and ensuring that counselling provision acknowledges the complexity of these extended family dynamics.

Counselling must be long-term and funded

Across our research, one finding recurs: the need for high-quality, long-term counselling provision. Implications counselling is currently a requirement of the donation process for donors and recipient parents, but our research suggests this provision is uneven and insufficiently sustained.

Donation is not a one-off event. A donor may find that the anticipated contact from a donor-conceived person, or the lack of it, raises new questions. Their own children may develop curiosity about donor siblings. Their parents or wider family may feel themselves to be impacted. Donor-conceived people also require support –  our research demonstrates how the need for support can ebb and flow across the life course, for all those involved.

In sum, evidence shows that counselling should be freely available to all those impacted by donor conception. It should be clearly separated from the legal process of informed consent, so donors and recipient parents feel genuinely free to explore what donation means to them. Equally importantly, counselling must remain available post-donation, not just at the point of donation.

Calls for reform

The UK’s approach to gamete donation needs reform. The evidence gathered by our research programmes points clearly to areas where the current system is not keeping pace with the realities experienced by those it affects.

Regulatory attention to the impact of direct-to-consumer genetic testing; the growth of known donation; recognition of the implications for peoples’ wider family; and better funded, long-term counselling are all priorities that our research shows need further attention.

Acknowledgements: we would like to thank Leah Gilman and Caroline Redhead, the ConnecteDNA team and our research participants.

• Quantum technologies provide a huge opportunity for the UK, which could become a global leader in a market predicted to be worth over £90 billion in the next decade.
• The National Graphene Institute has discovered the world’s purest silicon, and now researchers are working to use these pure samples as prototype quantum computers.
• To secure the UK’s place as a future quantum superpower, the government must continue to invest in: R&D, training, commercialisation of innovation, and in building and maintaining infrastructure.

Quantum technologies today 

Quantum physics is already key for our everyday technologies. Innovations such as semiconductor chips, which are essential for our phones and computers, are built upon quantum effects. Such technologies underpin our present ‘information age’ and we are now seeing the emergence of a new generation of technologies going beyond these, where the nature of the ‘information’ itself obeys the laws of quantum physics, often referred to as Quantum 2.0. 

Quantum technologies maximise the use of quantum effects in information processing to harness tremendous advantages, offering enhanced sensing and imaging, secure communications, novel materials, new tests of fundamental physics, and a profoundly novel and efficient form of computation. The potential applications span across the sciences and beyond, presenting both fantastic opportunities –  including greater medical diagnostic power and accelerated pharmaceutical drug discovery –  alongside immense risks and implications for national security, such as robust navigation, unbreakable encryption for secure communication, and faster decryption for codebreaking purposes. 

From the outset, the UK has been at the front of quantum technologies research. From the inception of quantum, scientists based in the UK have made many of the groundbreaking discoveries at the heart of the field. The Government established the National Quantum Technologies Programme (NQTP) in 2013, which supports valuable innovation and commercial initiatives such as the national ‘Quantum Hubs’ and the National Quantum Computing Centre. Published in 2023, the UK now has a National Quantum Strategy with five key missions. UK researchers remain at the forefront of quantum technologies research, and the UK is home to a vast number of quantum technologies start-ups. 

At present, we are seeing the realisation of proof-of-concept devices, from sensing to computing, and are now on the cusp of practical applications of some of these technologies. Beyond research capabilities and dedicated start-ups, we are now seeing significant investment from venture capitalists and major players in the technology industry, such as Google and Microsoft. Yet, there remain many obstacles to overcome before the full potential and benefits of quantum technologies are realised, from fundamental algorithmic design, through significant engineering challenges, to ensuring a capable quantum workforce.

Quantum at The University of Manchester 

From the breakthrough discovery of Graphene in 2010, to the establishment of the National Graphene Institute (NGI), The University of Manchester continues to boast a strong pedigree in 2D materials research. Research from The University of Manchester has discovered the world’s purest silicon; such freedom from impurities provides an excellent platform for engineering qubits, the fundamental building blocks of quantum computers. A major focus of ongoing research is in scaling up this purification process and furthering the use of these samples as prototype quantum computers. 

Systems theory – that is, how we model the interactions between a system and its surroundings – is a further strength. Not only can this help us in the design of viable hardware for quantum technologies, but it also gives us a clearer picture of the noise effects that plague and limit the capabilities of current quantum computers. With more sophisticated models of this noise, we can learn both how to mitigate against it and how to harness it for beneficial applications in complex systems modelling, such as weather, climate, and traffic. 

Research from The University of Manchester is also exploring how photons – the elementary unit of light – can be used to create and probe quantum phenomena. Hosted at the Photon Science Institute, these experiments build tools to generate, control and detect light down to the single photon level, and use light to control matter for the development of quantum sensors and observe microscopic processes at extreme length and time scales. 

The establishment of the new Centre for Quantum Science and Engineering (CQSE) at The University of Manchester aims to ensure that quantum research strengths work to boost synergistic connections, furthering our status as a prime venue for quantum research, attracting and training key talent in the field, and placing us in a leading role in bringing forth the new quantum technological frontier. 

Securing UK quantum leadership  

The proposed benefits of quantum technologies have been predicted to stimulate a global market in excess of tens of billions GBP, with the economic benefits of quantum computing alone in the region of £1 trillion. Present investment in the field, though substantial, still pales in comparison to these numbers. With the UK now on the brink of practical quantum advantages – particularly in terms of timekeeping, imaging, and sensing – there remain theoretical and engineering challenges to realising the full potential of quantum technologies, and their powerful applications. Like the industrial revolution, the quantum revolution will not be a singular point, but a constant period of rapid innovation and development. To ensure continued UK quantum leadership throughout, we must continue to invest in advancing cutting-edge quantum research and development (R&D). 

The UK needs a quantum-ready workforce, not just for developing future quantum technologies, but also to ensure these are used to their full potential in practice. This means building an effective training pipeline, not just for quantum scientists, but also for end users of quantum technologies more broadly. Quantum as a field is all too often presented as mysterious and incomprehensible for non-experts, creating a perceived high entry barrier. To combat this, support is needed for the development of training programmes designed to demystify and simplify quantum technologies for non-scientists, and the introduction of quantum modules into digital technologies upskilling programmes. Such training will create the necessary quantum-literate workers for the UK to be a leading quantum era economy. 

The UK National Quantum Technologies Progamme (NQTP) is a £1 billion dynamic collaboration between industry, academia and government. The NQTP supports five quantum hubs, each championing key domains within quantum technologies – such as quantum computing (QCI3) and sensing and imaging (QuSIT) – acting as beacons for their respective areas. To further the impact of the programme, regional quantum hubs should be created to focus on initiatives that cross quantum specialisations and combine the breadth of expertise from the domain-based hubs, supporting local research networks to pool expertise and resources. The N8 group of Northern universities currently runs semi-annual ‘Northern Quantum Meetings’ for research dissemination and collaboration formation, and agreements exist between these universities for quantum technologies research infrastructure. New regional cross-quantum hubs should be established, building on this blueprint, and should bring in key players in the Northern quantum industry, such as IBM Quantum and PsiQuantum in Daresbury and Aegiq in Sheffield. In line with both missions set out in the NQTP, and plans for economic and regional growth as laid out by the Starmer Government, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) should work collaboratively with the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to establish a Northern Quantum Powerhouse Hub to further unify, co-ordinate, and grow such activities to solidify the North – and the UK’s – quantum leadership. 

The UK’s Quantum Missions set out an ambitious vision for UK quantum leadership. Realised, this will place the UK as one of the world’s future quantum superpowers, but this requires continued investment: in R&D, people and training, commercialisation of innovation, and in building and maintaining infrastructure.  

With the necessary investment and approach, the UK has the potential to become a leading nation of the forthcoming quantum revolution, capturing great benefits for society, industry, and national security. 

• The staggered rollout of UC between 2013 and 2018 is associated with worsening population mental health and higher mental health-related healthcare use.
• By 2018, this equated to around 113,000 additional cases of depression, 30,000 extra mental health-related hospital admissions and attendances, and 1.29 million more antidepressant prescriptions each year, with combined annual costs of £2.84 billion.
• Proposed reforms to welfare spending must consider the wider health impact, with provisions to mitigate and avoid replicating the effects of UC.

Universal Credit (UC) was introduced to simplify the benefits system and strengthen work incentives. It replaced six means-tested benefits with a single monthly payment, alongside a digital-first application process, a minimum five-week wait for the first payment, and a unified system of work-search requirements. It now supports over 7.5 million people, more than 18% of the UK’s working-age population.

Yet welfare design is not only about employment and public spending. It also shapes health. The level, timing and conditions of financial support influence income security, stress, and people’s ability to manage work and daily life. Simplification and clearer work incentives can support employment, and good work is often good for health. But where support creates instability or financial strain, it can have the opposite effect. Welfare policy therefore has direct implications for demand on NHS services.

Our research links the rollout of UC across England to worsening population mental health and rising mental health-related use of NHS services. This matters now. The Government’s Get Britain Working agenda aims to reduce economic inactivity, and reshape employment support and health-related benefits. But if welfare delivery increases stress and mental ill-health, it risks weakening progress on employment while adding avoidable pressure to the NHS.

How did UC rollout affect mental health?

The staggered rollout of UC across England from 2013 to 2018 meant different areas were exposed at different times. This allowed us to compare outcomes before and after UC was introduced in each area.

Using national small-area administrative data, we tracked three outcomes: clinical diagnoses of depression, antidepressant prescribing, and mental health-related hospital admissions and attendances. Because the data cover entire neighbourhoods, the results capture population-wide impacts, including both direct effects on UC recipients and wider spillovers within households and communities.

We found that earlier exposure to UC was associated with worse mental health outcomes. At a national scale, by 2018, this translated to approximately:

• 113,742 additional depression cases per year.
• 29,993 additional mental health-related hospital admissions and attendances per year.
• 29 million additional antidepressant prescriptions per year.

Overall, the combined effects on healthcare and quality of life amounted to £2.84 billion in costs each year. These are not small side effects. They represent substantial downstream pressure on the NHS and significant costs borne by individuals, families and communities.

Why did this happen?

The patterns we observe are consistent with a simple pathway: financial strain and uncertainty increase the risk of mental ill-health, which in turn increases healthcare use and can make it harder to sustain employment.

Several design features of UC may contribute to this dynamic.

First, the start of a claim can be financially destabilising. A minimum five-week wait for the first payments, combined with deductions to repay advances can create sustained cash-flow pressures.

Second, administrative demands can create barriers. The digital-first claims process and complex evidence requirements may lead to delays, confusion and anxiety, particularly for people with limited digital access or literacy.

Third, UC formalised and intensified conditionality. With some exceptions under the Work Capability Assessment, claimants are expected to meet agreed work-search or work-preparation commitments, often for up to 35 hours per week, with the risk of sanctions if requirements are not met. While designed to encourage labour market participation, these expectations may be particularly difficult for people with fluctuating health conditions or emerging mental health problems who are not adequately supported.

These pressures may create a feedback loop. Policies intended to strengthen work incentives may, for some groups, increase stress and worsen mental health, making it harder to find and keep work.

This matters because mental ill-health carries large personal, social and economic costs. Long-term sickness is now a major driver of economic inactivity in the UK. If welfare design contributes to worsening mental health, it could widen existing health inequalities and work against wider policy goals on sustained employment and reduced pressure on NHS services.

Proposed reforms to health-related benefits further underscore the stakes. Recent modelling suggests that tightening eligibility for Personal Independence Payments could concentrate financial losses in more deprived constituencies and in areas with lower life expectancy. If reforms reduce support in places with the greatest health needs, there is a risk of widening inequalities and increasing demand on NHS services.

Policy implications: putting health at the centre of welfare reform

The Government’s reform agenda recognises the need to connect employment support with health support. Our findings highlight several considerations for policymakers as welfare reforms continue to evolve:

1. Reducing hardship at the start of a claim. Shortening or bridging the wait for the first payment, minimising avoidable delays, and reviewing deduction practices could reduce acute financial strain.
2. Conditionality may need to be carefully rebalanced for people at risk of poor health outcomes. Strengthening clinically informed safeguards and ensuring work-search expectations are realistic where mental health vulnerability exists may help reduce harm. The Pathways to Work model stresses flexible, tailored support for people with health conditions – adaptive conditionality is a key element of this.
3. Designing welfare systems for accessibility and dignity. Expanding supported non-digital routes and simplifying processes could reduce administrative stress for vulnerable claimants.
4. Integrating welfare and health support locally. Stronger links between welfare services and health support may help identify and assist people experiencing mental health difficulties earlier, particularly through local partnerships. This should build on the WorkWell initiative, connecting welfare services with social prescribers, counsellors, and mental healthcare providers.
5. Considering health impacts more systematically in welfare policy appraisal. Reforms are often evaluated primarily on employment and fiscal outcomes, but they can also have significant implications for population health and NHS use.

As Parliament considers reforms to health-related benefits and employment support, it is important that these wider system effects are considered. If financial losses are concentrated in more deprived, less healthy places, there is a real risk of increasing health inequalities and demand on already stretched NHS services.

A broader lesson

UC will remain central to the UK social security system and to any strategy to “Get Britain Working”. But welfare reform can carry a hidden health and healthcare bill.

If delivery choices increase stress and mental ill-health, the NHS will feel the consequences, and employment goals may become harder to achieve. Welfare policy is therefore labour market policy and public health policy at the same time, and recognising this connection is essential if we are to build a system that supports economic participation while protecting population wellbeing. The WorkWell initiative is a positive start, linking employment support with physical and mental health services for those living with illness or disabilities – but the same support must be made available for all welfare claimants. Work is widely recognised as a social determinant of health. Now policymakers must give the same recognition to the pathways to work.