Tory Levelling Up boasts have been exposed as hollow as analysis shows northern areas are worst hit by soaring rates of long-term sickness.

In a speech in Blackpool, Labour's Deputy Leader Angela Rayner will warn that Red Wall seats in the North and the Midlands had been treated as a "bargaining chip to get into power and tossed aside". The Shadow Levelling Up Secretary will point to how the top ten places with the most people out of the workforce because of long-term sickness are almost all in the North of England.

More than 2.6 million people do not have jobs because of health problems, according to the Office for National Statistics. The record number comes after 491,433 adults were added to the official total in the three months from May to July.

Official figures show Blackpool ranks second worst for the proportion of people out of work due to ill health (50.6%), with 10,500 people affected by long-term health problems out of 20,800 economically inactive. Stoke-on-Trent was the worst affected where 18,300 weren't employed due to sickness out of 35,600 economically inactive people (51.4%).

St Helens, in Merseyside, (46.7%), Barnsley (42.5%) in Yorkshire, and North East Lincolnshire (41.5%) were also badly affected. Peterborough (39%) is the only area outside of the North of England to make the top 10 worst affected areas.

Ms Rayner is expected to tell Labour’s North West Conference that Jeremy Hunt's Autumn Statement “lifted the lid on 13 years of Conservative economic failure”. She said “Blackpool has been left out in the cold by the Conservatives, along with the rest of the Red Wall.

"These communities have been forgotten by this Government, used as a bargaining chip to get onto power, and tossed aside at the first opportunity. From their ivory tower in Whitehall, the Conservatives’ top-down approach to levelling up has been to rubber stamp each region with a flat-pack regeneration project and say job-done. A few micro-managed pots of money, dished out from the centre, won’t touch the sides.”

The Chancellor outlined plans for more severe sanctions and harsher measures for people on out-of-work disability benefits in a bid to slash the Government's welfare bill. But Labour warned problems with getting people back into work would persist due to failure to tackle the root causes.

A Government spokesperson said: “We are taking the long-term decisions to cut health waiting lists and help everyone access the health and financial benefits of work, and inactivity has already fallen by nearly 300,000 since the pandemic peak.

“Last week we announced our Back to Work plan, which will help up to 1.1 million disabled people, people with long-term health conditions or the long-term unemployed to look for and stay in work. To speed up access to treatment for hundreds of thousands of patients, we have also invested £1.5 billion into surgical hubs across the country.”

Areas worst affected by long-term sickness

  1. Stoke-on-Trent: 18,300 out of 35,600 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (51.4 per cent).
  2. Blackpool: 10,500 of 20,800 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (50.6 per cent).
  3. St. Helens: 10,300 of 22,000 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (46.7 per cent).
  4. Barnsley: 17,000 of 40,400 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (42.5 per cent).
  5. North East Lincolnshire: 9,800 of 23,500 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (41.5 per cent).
  6. South Tyneside: 11,100 of 27,500 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (40.5 per cent).
  7. Stockton-on-Tees: 11,800 of 29,900 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (39.3 per cent).
  8. Peterborough: 9,200 of 23,500 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (39.0 per cent).
  9. Rotherham: 15,900 of 40,900 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (38.9 per cent).
  10. Halton: 6,600 of 17,100 economically inactive people out of work because of long-term sickness (38.4 per cent).