Mental Health Culture Has Gone ‘Too Far,’ Says Work and Pensions Minister

Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride arrives in Downing Street ahead of a Cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street in London on Dec. 13, 2022. Leon Neal/Getty Images

Mental health culture in the UK has gone “too far,” resulting in the normal ups and downs of life being viewed as “medical conditions” that hold people back, and “ultimately, drive up the benefit bill,” a minister has said.

Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride made the comments to The Telegraph on Wednesday as he unveiled plans to make 150,000 people signed off work with “mild” conditions get back into the workforce.

Mr. Stride told the newspaper that “as a culture, we seem to have forgotten that work is good for mental health.”

“While I’m grateful for today’s much more open approach to mental health, there is a danger that this has gone too far,” he said.

“There is a real risk now that we are labelling the normal ups and downs of human life as medical conditions which then actually serve to hold people back and, ultimately, drive up the benefit bill,” the work and pensions secretary warned.

The minister acknowledged that while the topic was sensitive, it could not become a “no-go area” and that it was “something we need to start having an honest, grown-up debate about.”

“It is too important for people and their futures, too important for the way that welfare works, and too important for the economy to just ignore,” Mr. Stride said.

Mental Health-Related Inactivity ‘Rising Since the Pandemic’

Dr. Lade Smith, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, criticised the minister for the remarks, saying it was “disappointing” to see him “diminish and misrepresent people with mental illness.”

Dr. Smith said: “There has been a significant increase in poverty, deprivation, housing insecurity and homelessness, loneliness, and isolation over the last 15 years and these issues are all associated with depression and anxiety.

“It is therefore not surprising that we have seen a dramatic rise in people struggling with mental illness, including those who are at risk of self-harm and suicide.”

On Thursday, a Number 10 spokesman said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak agreed with Mr. Stride on “the challenges that we are facing with tackling long-term sickness-related inactivity in the workforce.”

He said, “It is clear that long-term sickness-related inactivity and mental health-related inactivity have been rising since the pandemic.”

The spokesman continued that the government had made “some progress” in bringing down that inactivity down, saying its £2.5 billion Back to Work Plan “seeks to tackle the barriers people are facing in returning to the labour market, including those with mental health conditions.”

Benefits Assessments and Mental Health

Mr. Stride’s remarks come after the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) released figures detailing that 874,000 Universal Credit health Work Capability Assessments (WCAs) in Britain between January 2022 to November 2023 recorded mental and behavioural disorders in Universal Credit WCA decisions.

This represents 69 percent out of a total of 1.275 million decisions made by Universal Credit health.

The DWP explained that “claimants often have complex health issues and can thus be recorded with multiple conditions,” meaning that those with recorded mental and behavioural disorders may have other health issues recorded with Universal Credit. The department also said that Universal Credit health assessments record all medical conditions, but do not record which is the “primary” condition.

In relation to the DWP statistics, a spokesperson from the department had told The Epoch Times that its welfare reforms would “cut the number of people due to be put onto the highest tier of incapacity benefits by over 370,000 and instead give them personalised support, while our Chance to Work Guarantee will enable people to try work without fear of losing their benefits.”

The department also said that it was expanding access to mental health services in an effort to tackle one of the main reasons for sickness absence, including putting an additional 384,000 people through NHS Talking Therapies over the next five years.

Welfare Reforms

In September, the government launched a consultation on reforms to the WCA, which is used to determine what activities a person can do and how that affects their capacity to work. This assessment then informs decisions on what financial benefits people can receive or what they need to do to return to work.

Proposals include “updating the categories associated with mobility and social interaction, reflecting improved employer support in recent years for flexible and home working – and minimising the risk of these issues causing problems for workers,” according to the government.

Those who are determined capable of work in light of those changes would receive “tailored support” in assisting people back into the workforce.

These changes are not expected to come into force until after the general election.

In November, the government announced its Back to Work Plan, which aims to assist up to 1.1 million people with disabilities, long-term health conditions, or long-term unemployment to look for work and stay employed.

Economic Inactivity

According to a research briefing on labour market statistics published by the House of Commons library on March 12, between November 2023 to January 2024, there were 9.25 million people in the UK between the ages of 16 and 64 who were “economically inactive,” meaning they were not in work and not actively looking for work.

The briefing said that long-term sickness (30 percent) and being a student (28 percent) were the leading reasons for economic activity.

“The number of economically inactive people with a long-term illness was close to its highest recorded level since comparable records began in 1993,” the briefing noted.

Authors also remarked that there had been “large increases in inactivity since the start of the pandemic” for those aged 16–24 and 50–64.

PA Media contributed to this report.