David Cameron tweeted a link to the following article by Justin Tomlinson, the minister for disabled people, on World Mental Health Day:
This weekend sees World Mental Health Day, an opportunity to raise awareness and discuss how we can better support the one in six people in the UK who have a common mental health condition.
Of particular concern to me is how a mental health problem can negatively impact someone’s employment prospects and career ambitions.
As someone who ran a small business, I have seen how it is possible for employers to let down their disabled staff. I employed someone with a mental health condition who, with only minor changes to the way we worked, made an enormous contribution to my business. In time he was offered a promotion at another company. I was proud he was going on to bigger and better things.
Imagine my frustration then when I found out he left this new role after a short period of time. It transpired that, in this new role, he wasn’t receiving the support he needed. What a waste of talent, simply because the new employer didn’t have the confidence to discuss what small changes were needed.
This experience is part of what makes me determined to get to a place where all businesses know what it takes to support people to flourish in work.
Companies need to understand that small, personalised changes can open up their recruitment to a diverse workforce as well as bring a raft of business benefits. We are supporting employers to do this through our #DisabilityConfident campaign. Since the campaign was launched just over two years ago, 351,000 more disabled people are now in work.
Not only are people with mental health conditions at risk of falling out of work if they are not properly supported, but poor mental health can also prevent people from successfully searching for work.
Almost a quarter of people claiming Jobseekers Allowance today have a mental health condition. For many, poor mental health will be the cause of their joblessness, for others it will be the effect. But regardless of which, these people need better support and we’re going to do something about it.
That’s why we’re investing £40m to introduce a range of pilots to find out how best we can support people with mental health conditions in looking for work.
This will help open up the chances to earn a living for people who have for too long been shut out of that opportunity.
We know that early access to therapies offers someone the ability to manage mental health conditions; so naturally I want that support available to anyone who wants it.
This support will not be right for every person or solve every problem. And we know that there will always be some people for whom work will never be possible. We remain committed to protecting those most vulnerable people in our society.
But this is about giving those who can work every possible tool to help them tailor their job hunting to what they need. It’s about giving control back to the person.
We know that the vast majority of people with mental health conditions want to succeed in work and we will give them all the support we can. I don’t want to see any more potential needlessly wasted.
Make sure your get involved using #WMHD2015. We need to keep the conversation going so this crucial topic is widely known and fully understood.
I am not sure if I should be happy or sad that the “minister for disabled people” has been assigned to address the nation on the issue of mental health. I’d much rather Cameron had appointed a minister, rather like my old friend Jeremy Corbyn when he appointed a shadow minister, but we know why he didn’t. Mr Tomlinson’s words are just spin; empty, worthless, vacuous spin. And a spin that wants us to believe that the opposite of what is really going on is true.
We all know that Cameron’s real aim is not to help people into work, it’s to get them off benefits. It’s not about acting in the interests of people who are ill, it’s about cutting benefits. The facts bear me out.
Under David Cameron, 4,946 Mental Health Beds have been axed, a reduction of one fifth in the overall number of beds. On 7 September 2015, there wasn’t a single mental health bed available in the whole of England. This has led, among other things, to juveniles being detained in police cells because there are not mental health beds available for them. In 2010, there were 23515 mental health beds, in 2015 there were 18,569. There’s more.
Under David Cameron, 4,528 Pyschiatric nurses of all types have been axed, despite a 30% increase in demand for mental health services.
We don’t know how much money has been cut from mental health funding. An investigation by the BBC revealed £600m of mental health cuts while a separate study showed that £85m had been cut. Yet another shows a £110m reduction in adult mental health spending. Jeremy Hunt, of course, disputes all of this and claims that spending on mental health has gone up in real terms. What is most important, however, is that no evidence shows an increase in NHS funding for mental health services, and at a time when the government have said that NHS spending is rising in real terms every year there is no evidence that mental health is receiving any additional funding. All available evidence indicates mental health services are in rapid decline.
I treat Mr Tomlinson’s comments with the contempt they so richly deserve. We are used to politicians saying one thing and doing the opposite. Just last week, David Cameron’s conference speech gave the impression of a caring, compassionate Conservative Party, but behind the rhetoric was a vicious attack on the working poor which will plunge 200,000 more people into real poverty.
The only positive I can think of is that the Tories actually feel the need to speak about mental health at all. This must surely be because the campaigns of enlightenment are beginning to resonate with the electorate at large. In other words, Cameron believes there could be some votes in it for him. This is why we need to keep the pressure up and, where possible, intensify it. Cameron talks left but walks right and here he speaks of recognising mental health issues, but at the same time reduces mental health spending.
Even the £40 million Mr Tomlinson claims “we’re investing £40m to introduce a range of pilots to find out how best we can support people with mental health conditions in looking for work” rather misses the point. For one thing £40 million is absolute peanuts in the grand scheme of things and for another it doesn’t get near addressing those who need help like counselling, therapy and, in some instances, medical help.
Some employers are great at caring for those who suffer from illness, others are not. I was fortunate in my latter years in the civil service by having a manager who made things better for me, but I also had the misfortune to work for managers who made things much worse. And one of my work experiences post civil service was with an employer whose bullying attitudes made my clinical depression worse. In that instance, every little didn’t help.
With the same government looking to further undermine workers’ rights in the coming years, things are likely get much worse.
When Mr Tomlinson says, “We need to keep the conversation going so this crucial topic is widely known and fully understood” it is important we recognise that this is, pure and simple, bullshit. Things are getting worse, not better, and when the coming public spending cuts are imposed, Messrs Cameron and Tomlinson will need to be outed for the shysters that they are.
