Are mental health benefits too generous? The i Paper experts’ verdicts ...Middle East

Sir Keir Starmer on Monday promised a “productivity revolution”, pledging to reform a welfare state that has “kept young people out of work”.

Experts have concluded that this could mean curbing benefits for young people with mental health issues. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found in September last year that since 2019, new disability benefit awards for under-40s were up by 150 per cent and that new claimants were more likely to claim for mental health problems.

Around £65bn is currently being spent on health and disability benefits, and the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that by 2029-30, spending will have increased to £72.3bn.

So are mental health benefits too generous? The i Paper’s experts give their verdicts.

Kitty Donaldson: Most MPs agree the bill is too big

Demand for mental health services is up more than 36 per cent on pre-pandemic levels. Most MPs in Westminster, bar some on the far left, agree the ballooning welfare bill needs tackling sharpish.

But that’s where Westminster agreement ends when it comes to how to tackle the problem. Should those claiming health-related benefits be believed and given sympathy and support? Or are the vast majority simply idle and need a boot up the backside into work?

At one end of the spectrum sits Reform UK MP Lee Anderson, who has suggested some claimants with anxiety “are gaming the system” and proposed stopping people with milder mental disorders from claiming personal independence payments (PIP) in order to save the taxpayer an estimated £9bn per year.

For the Conservatives, Helen Whately, the shadow work and pensions secretary, has also claimed large numbers of people were using sickness benefits as a “lifestyle choice”, as she promised a crackdown.

The Labour Party is the most split in its attitudes to welfare claimants. Today, Starmer talked up a “moral mission” to bring the number of claimants down and into work to boost productivity. The tough talk on welfare will prompt fresh unease among some MPs about attempts to cut the benefits bill.

Last summer’s attempt – ultimately thwarted by backbenchers – prompted concerns about the impact on the most vulnerable and disabled people. Getting that balance right will be key to any future reforms.

Nonetheless, if there is one thing that unites all political parties, it is the rage at the online TikTok influencers who coach would-be benefits claimants on how to boost their chances of making a successful claim. “Round ‘em up,” one Conservative MP told The i Paper recently, furious about the influencers. A nearby Labour MP overheard and nodded in agreement.

Kitty Donaldson is The i Paper’s chief political commentator

Sarah Collins: Claimants are not ‘scroungers’

Much of the debate about Britain’s welfare bill for mental health focuses on ADHD and anxiety, two common conditions at the centre of the culture war about “overdiagnosis”. But people with less common serious mental illnesses (SMI) like schizophrenia, bipolar or personality disorders are rarely mentioned.

Far from being too generous, the mental health benefits available to this group often leave them in poverty – half of people with SMI in the north of England in 2024 were unable to afford food. And people with SMI already get a raw deal in society: they are five times more likely to die before the age of 75 and are overrepresented in the rough sleeping population. Rhetoric painting them as “scroungers” couldn’t be further from the reality of their lives.

The number of working-age people signed off from work rightly rings alarm bells about the state of the nation’s mental health, but pushing people into poverty is not the solution.

square IAN BIRRELL

Our welfare bill is ballooning - and our pathetic politicians are to blame

Improving access to mental healthcare for people who could work with the right support is essential, as is making the welfare system more dignified for people with SMI.

Sarah Collins is assistant editor at Prospect and a mental health columnist

Julie Burchill: There’s nothing wrong with many on benefits

It took me around six months to be approved for my PIP despite the fact that I am in a wheelchair and will never walk again.

Though I’m a generous person, I grew slightly annoyed at the apparent ease with which others far less unfortunate than I are given benefits for minor ailments.

Anxiety, for example, is now rewarded with a record number of PIP hand-outs. I’ve personally known people “too unwell to work” for decades who are never too unwell to go on copious foreign holidays each year – you’d think the “stress” of travelling would play havoc with their mental health, but apparently not.

But do I envy these layabouts? Never. I’ve managed to stay reasonably emotionally stable after the ghastly events of the past year, I believe, because I never stopped working. A week after coming around from the operation that would save my life but rob me of the ability to walk, I was sitting up in bed writing about it for various publications, including this one.

I can’t think of anything worse for anyone’s mental health than not having a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Before I became disabled, not only was I up at six every day writing (and still am, thus still usefully paying income tax, as I have since I was 17 and still do as a pensioner of 66), but I would go out at nine and work the morning in a menial role in a charity shop, six days a week. In my opinion, there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with a large proportion of those currently living off benefits – unless laziness is now counted as an actual illness.

Julie Burchill is a journalist and author

Andrew Fisher: Starmer has misdiagnosed the problem

A Prime Minister making a speech attacking benefits. It could be any point in the last 45 years.

As befits a Labour Prime Minister, Starmer wraps his attack in a thin veil of concern, saying he “doesn’t want young people written off”, but he’s misdiagnosed the problem. It’s not the social security system that is writing off young people, but a depressed jobs market, a failing mental health system, and a housing market that shuts them out.

Social security is a thermometer measuring the health of the nation. When it rises, it’s because other things are going wrong: the labour market, the NHS, social care or the housing market. Right now, all four are going wrong.

Youth unemployment is no higher today than it was when the Conservatives left office, despite overall unemployment continuing to rise. But vacancies in the labour market have been falling for nearly three years. Create jobs and people will take them. That’s the job of economic and industrial policy, not social security.

Despite the U-turn on cuts to PIP, the Government is proceeding with cuts to the health element of universal credit (UC), including stripping the UC health element altogether from young people. This will do nothing to solve the mental health crisis, which is best addressed by cutting NHS mental health treatment times, now happening but at a glacial pace.

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And give young people hope – the belief that, like their parents, they can get secure housing: a home of their own or a secure, affordable rental. Delivering that would doubtless improve young people’s mental health.

Starmer is blaming the thermometer for rising temperatures. He needs to get tougher on the causes.

Andrew Fisher is the former executive director of policy for the Labour Party

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