Proposed Scottish Employment Injuries Advisory Council Bill

Good morning! 

I know - two posts in 24 hours, when you haven’t heard from us in such a long time. 

Yesterday, we updated you with the news that Scotland is likely to take over a form of Industrial Illness Disablement Benefit - which currently most of us are not eligible to apply for. However, the first step for the Scottish Government is to set up our own Employment Injuries Advisory Council - which would make decisions about what kind of diseases or conditions should be included in any Scottish Equivalent of Industrial Illness Disablement Benefit (IIDB). Mark Griffin MSP has brought this private member’s bill with a view in the medium term to getting this moving. It’s a small step, but one in the right direction. He is extremely keen that Long Covid is front and centre in any discussions in relation to this. We are very keen to support him. 

As we intimated yesterday, the public consultation on this was due to open and it now is! It will be open for ten weeks. Not a lot of time, especially with school holidays, but should be enough time for those of us with limited energy to respond!

If you are a Scottish keyworker with occupational Long Covid, please have a look at the above links and the five questions they’re asking and consider making a submission. We cannot stress enough how important it is to do this, especially if you have tried to complete the IIDB process, whether successful or not. If you’re not eligible, we think the committee need to know this too. 

We do acknowledge that this affects Scotland, however please know that our campaign intends to prepare a submission as a group. In order to do that, we think it’s still appropriate for the Keyworker Petition Campaign - pending advice on whether or not those outside Scotland can complete individual submissions - to speak about issues our keyworker community have had in relation to financial support, specifically IIDB. With that in view, we would like to hear from any of you across the U.K. by email:

1) Where you are in the Uk

2) If you were eligible to apply for IIDB

3) If you were successful with your application or not, how you found the process of application

4) If successful, if you thought any award was fair. 

Any information we submit to the committee will be entirely anonymised, bar general geographical location (ie if you live in Camden, we would say London). A direct comment may be used, but your name, initial, gender, age etc will not. All emails with personal information will be deleted immediately following your story being collected.

As always, you can email us direct at keyworkerpetitionuk@gmail.com.

Thanks in advance for any help with this important issue. Only three U.K. nations to go!

We also need to shout out to the British Medical Association who, along with Long Covid Doctors For Action (@LCD4A on Twitter) who yesterday released the information from their survey of around 600 doctors with Long Covid. You can read the press release here. Unsurprisingly, this survey found similar results to the one we did in March and the larger TUC and Long Covid Support survey. Multiple surveys saying the same thing: Not enough financial support, not enough workplace support, so why aren’t the U.K. governments acting? 

In the meantime, it might be an idea to write to your MP and Senedd members to ask them what’s happening with financial support and compensation for Keyworkers with occupational long Covid, especially in light of not only the three surveys, but also the APPG report from March 2022. Producing a draft letter for this purpose is on our list of things to do for those who currently struggle with this kind of thing. 

We think we will get there, it’s just going to take time. In the meantime, I’m looking forwards to getting my powered wheelchair so I can get out and about - including future campaign activity! 

Happy Tuesday everyone! Thank you again for your support.