Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has announced that mental health care will “get a funding boost” in next week’s budget. “Nick (Clegg) has made mental health a huge thing for our party,” said Alexander. “It’s going to be one of the five key pledges on our manifesto.” The Lib Dems ‘five key pledges?’ Oh dear.
Here is a simple fact about mental health treatment under this Tory government in which some Liberals have jobs. Spending on mental health has fallen by 6% in real terms since 2010. How come they’ve suddenly decided to spend more, which will really mean they’ve cut slightly less?
Read between the lines and it turns out the increase in spending will specifically cover our armed forces and young people, two areas criminally ignored in recent years, but there will be no increases anywhere else. It would require a cynic – and I am a card-carrying cynic: the word was invented for me – to suggest that Alexander’s announcement has anything to do with garnering a few extra votes in the coming election. There are no votes, normally, in mental health, hence the dramatic cuts in this area since 2010, but is the analysis by the spin doctors suggesting that helping the armed forces and young people might be popular? And moreover, that there are no votes in improving health for everyone else? I have no idea whether this is right, but I would not put it past politicians to play politics with people’s mental health.
Those of us who are afflicted with mental ill health know the reality on the ground. There is very little for sufferers in between the mildly depressed to the maniacally depressed.
Perhaps we should come at this argument from the place that politicians understand: money. It is believed that, at a conservative estimate, mental health issues cost the economy £70 billion – that’s billion – a year. There is evidence that the actual cost is actually far higher. So where is the economic sense in cutting spending on mental health? There is, of course, no sense in it, but nonetheless we sit idly by whilst our rulers reduce services.
Danny Alexander has, belatedly, acknowledged that there are important issues with mental health but mine has been made much worse by people like him and his master, the man with the vainglorious non job of Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, whose pants remain on fire.
And Clegg himself announced that he intended to “end discrimination against mental health”. Well, I’d agree with Nick if he didn’t have form in the promises department and, quite frankly, I don’t believe him on this either. If, God forbid, the Tories go into another coalition from May with any remaining Lib Dem MPs, you know what will happen. Clegg would say you have to make compromises and this promise would go the same way as his promise on student tuition fees. He’d probably triple the cuts to mental health spending and call it ‘progressive’.
A friend of mine was once told by his therapist that supporting his local football team was making his mental health worse. I have the same problem with Alexander and Clegg.
