This year’s party conference is taking place in a city where Covid and austerity have led to high levels of economic inactivity

Wes Streeting was in the right place when he announced plans to prioritise cutting NHS waiting lists in areas with the highest numbers of people out of work due to ill health. Liverpool, where the health secretary was speaking at Labour’s annual party conference on Wednesday, is top of the list.

More than a decade of austerity, an ageing population, and the impact of the Covid pandemic have left Britain with deep problems with ill health. Economic inactivity – the number of working-age adults are neither in a job nor looking for one – has risen sharply, reaching more than 9 million, with about a third of those cases a consequence of record levels of temporary and long-term sickness.