Imagine you are working on a zero-hours contract when you’re diagnosed with cancer – the odds are good – but still, you need to undergo months of appointments, tests, surgery, treatments, and suffer the effects of these. Your diary becomes even more full than it was when you scrabbled around for a few hours of work here, a few hours there – at the mercy of a ‘normalised’ socio-economic business model based on insecurity – in which the risks of employment land squarely on your own shoulders.

At the point of diagnosis, when your world is turned upside down, you may already be on, or could be entitled to sign on for universal credit . If this is before April 2026, you could receive the health-related element, which is around £420 per month on top. If you are diagnosed with cancer after

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