it's the only way to build a better life for ourselves and our family and the only way to build a more prosperous country, but in the period since the pandemic something has gone wrong. the proportion of people who were economically inactive in britain is still lower than our international peers and lower today than in any year under the last labor government, but since the pandemic 850,000 more people have joined this group due to long-term sickness. this has wiped out eight decades worth of progress in which the rate had fallen every single year. of those who are economically inactive, fully half say they have depression or anxiety. and most worrying of all the biggest increase due to long-term sickness came from young people. those in the prime of their