Signal & Brus

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I wish politicians would put more effort into finding creative solutions and less into explaining how dangerous their opponents are. Take the qualifying deduction for sick pay. Must the choice really be between keeping everything as it is and abolishing it altogether?

Anyone who wants to reduce the financial blow for people who fall ill does not have to be a threat to business. Anyone concerned about costs and abuse does not have to be indifferent to people who become ill. Yet that is all too often exactly how the debate sounds.

Where is the willingness to try something in between?

What if agreement could be reached on half a qualifying day? Or a ceiling of no more than one full qualifying deduction per month, even if someone falls ill on several separate occasions. Or exemptions for certain occupations—for example, jobs where people encounter infection at work and cannot work from home.

What is commonly called the qualifying day is, for employees entitled to sick pay, a qualifying deduction. Half a qualifying day could therefore be designed as a 50 per cent reduction in today’s deduction.

For those who work closely with patients, older people or young children, there may be good reasons not to have to choose between losing income and going to work while infectious. Those who can work from home have other options. It ought to be possible to discuss such differences without immediately digging into opposing trenches.

These proposals are alternative avenues to explore. The costs have to be calculated, it must be decided who will pay, and the rules must be made understandable. A monthly ceiling, for example, must be weighed against the safeguards already in place. That is what political work ought to be about.

I am not insisting that any particular one of my examples is the perfect solution. I am asking for the willingness to try. Sit down at the same table, take the other side’s objections seriously, and come back with something that actually solves more of the problem.

It is possible to hold firm views and still negotiate. A compromise can be a sign that you have understood both the problem and your mandate.

The qualifying deduction is only one example. I want to see the same approach on more issues: less energy spent portraying the other side as a threat to people or to business, and more spent finding solutions that work for both.

We elect politicians to make society work. We should therefore be able to demand a little more ingenuity than yet another quarrel.

The illustration is AI-generated.