Tony Blair spoke on the Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future podcast about our ballooning mental health self-diagnosis rates. Couldn’t be something to do with the free cash, could it?
“You’ve got to be careful of translating those [challenges] into a mental health condition and losing your own agency, in a way, to govern your own life… Life has its ups and downs and everybody experiences those. And you’ve got to be careful of encouraging people to think they’ve got some sort of condition other than simply confronting the challenges of life. We need a proper public conversation about this because you really cannot afford to be spending the amount of money we’re spending on mental health.”
The cost of Personal Independence Payments, the main disability benefit, is predicted to rise by 60% from £22 billion to £35 billion in four years. If the Treasury cut spending on disability benefits and universal credit just to pre-pandemic levels it could take 3p off the basic rate of income tax, 4p off the higher rate, and scrap the higher rate of Inheritance Tax…
Blair adds that “you’ve got to be careful of translating those [ups and downs] into a mental health condition and losing your own agency, in a way, to govern your own life.” The phrase ‘get a grip’ comes to mind…
Paula Barker, Liverpool Wavertree MP backing Andy Burnham, told Times Radio there wouldn’t be trouble from the markets under Burnham:
“The markets will have to fall in line.”