Is the Labour Government in a competition with itself to come up with ever increasingly ridiculous policies before it gets kicked out of power? It definitely seems that way, with the latest being the announcement of how it wants to overhaul the fit note system. In four trial areas across the UK, patients will now either get an initial fit note from a GP and then are referred to a community health worker, or don’t get a note from a GP and instead are supported by a separate service.

This supposedly will include work and health support, including discussions among a patient, employer, and trained professionals to implement reasonable adjustments and help them stay connected to their workplace. On the face of it, this seems like a good thing. After all, work is one of the things that can give people a sense of purpose and enable them to pay their bills and buy stuff. (And who doesn’t love stuff?)

But, yet again, the policy just blatantly exposes how little Keir Starmer and his cronies know about how the country works.

Let’s take me as an example: I recently returned from a few days away in Cornwall, which is one of the Government’s pilot areas. There, the GPs are supposedly referring patients to a non-clinical service rather than issuing fit notes.

How does the Government propose this will work for employees who will definitely be back at their desks, but maybe not for a few weeks?

I had meningitis three years ago and when I was discharged from hospital I called my GP to get a fit note as I was advised I needed some more time at home to recover. She signed me off for a fortnight, and I was able to let my boss know and submit the note to HR.

If I had meningitis this week and lived and worked in Cornwall, would I now have to face the ridiculous situation of telling my employer that I can’t show them a fit note and instead say I have been referred to a service and the appointment will be five weeks after I’m back at work?

Three years on from my meningitis fit note, I’m still a Government statistic, because I have an ongoing fit note due to having incurable bowel cancer.

On it, my GP has written that I enjoy work and want to do as much as I can, fitting it around hospital appointments and chemotherapy side effects.

And that’s what I try to do. My GP knows me and so knows what I want to do, and my employer knows me and so is aware of what I can do.

A referral to a separate service just so the Government can say it’s reducing the amount of fit notes issued wouldn’t help me, and it’s absolutely ridiculous to think it would.

Thankfully, an encounter I had with a DWP employee when I returned to work after my first year of fighting cancer gives me hope that the people who work for the Government understand the world of work much more than those in the Government.

Officially, I was supposed to have been assigned a work coach from a charity whose role would have been to accompany me in the workplace and ensure that everything I was doing there counted as work.

But after a bit of explanation, we agreed that this wasn’t necessary, as my job is the same as before I got ill, just on very reduced hours.

Thank God for common sense.