Heard of George Freeman? Until this weekend, neither had I. It turns out that he is Director of the Number 10 policy unit which, I assume, does what it says on the tin. He’s an MP, too, serving the constituency of Mid Norfolk. From the depths of obscurity, he has now moved into the public eye with his crass and cruel comments about mental health.
Mr Freeman is an ordinary man of the people, as you can see from his CV. He went to Radley College, a private boarding school which costs a trifling £11,000 per term and then onto Cambridge University. A career as a venture capitalist followed before he decided to stand as an MP in the not-exactly-marginal seat of Mid Norfolk. None of this is his fault: he cannot be blamed for being born into a family that was stinking rich: I am just trying to paint the background.
His intervention has joined in the current row about the government’s review into Personal Independence Payment (PIP) benefits for the long term sick and disabled. In the DWP, a review always means trying to pay less money to people. When a government minister says he wants to help people back into work, he means that he wants to get people off benefits. So let’s not beat about the bush. In time, some 160,000 people will be worse off as a result of this “review” so it is important.
I have sympathy with the government, believe it or not. I recall around a decade ago being given an internal DWP document (I still have it) about the cost of the then Disability Living Allowance and, particularly, the Mobility Allowance where disabled people can cash in part of their benefits in order to have a brand new car. That sounds all right in itself until the costs – which are huge – are revealed and you learn that the Motability fleet of vehicles is the second largest in the world after the Chinese Army. In a country heavily in debt, like we are, and spending more money than we have coming in, you could understand why ministers would look at possible cost savings. The trouble is we have a Conservative government’s ministers looking at savings and that’s when people get worried.
Old George Freeman demonstrated his empathy with those on PIP by saying that disability benefits were for “the really disabled (and not for) people who sit at home taking pills, suffering from anxiety.” Whoah! Hang on a minute. Today, I’m sitting at home having taken some pills to counter my anxiety and clinical depression. There are people who are far worse off with mental illness than me. I am usually able to function, even on a bad day, and I have become a very good actor, like many of us mentalists. But how about that generality from posh boy Freeman? He is saying that mental illness is no such thing. You’re only ill if you are physically ill. So much for Theresa May’s statement that mental health is a “priority for this government” adding that mental health was “shrouded in a completely unacceptable stigma and dangerously disregarded as a secondary issue to physical health.” A stigma reinforced by her head policy wonk. Well, thanks for that.
How on earth can we make meaningful progress with mental health when those with, or near, the levers of power can diminish the effects of a type of illness that wrecks people’s lives.
Mr Freeman has apologised now, after having first attempted to justify what he said but I’m afraid that’s not good enough. This is a man who has enjoyed the best education money can buy, a multimillionaire who will never want for anything and he tells me that my illness, and the illness of so many people in this land, isn’t an illness at all. Or if he isn’t, he says society should abandon them.
His is certainly the attitude I have encountered so much in my working life, that you’re not really ill, “just pull yourself together”, abandoning me to the scrapheap which I narrowly managed to avoid but at times it was close. I cannot know this, but wasn’t Mr Freeman just being honest, that he really does believe that mental illness is a matter of trivia, that it’s all in the mind, you might say.
By all means, look at the overall costs of benefits in this country. This is a legitimate thing to do. The government spends our money, not theirs, so yes, have a review, make it better and fairer. But let’s not have former venture capitalists making judgement on those who suffer often crippling mental health conditions. Poor mental health can kill, just like physical poor health. Just when I thought we were getting a grip on a serious subject, the stigma returns.
Now excuse me while I sit down at home and take my pills.
