Starmer’s latest DWP plan is to target people with mental health issues

Labour’s latest Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) scheme to force disabled people who can’t work back into employment is in full swing and the prime minister is piling on in the demonisation of disabled people.

This morning, Wednesday 1 October, prime minister Keir Starmer told Radio 4’s Nick Robinson that “there is a moral case for changing” who is eligible for sickness benefits.

He said:

I’m not saying you shouldn’t have benefits for mental health issues, but I do think we need to examine this quite carefully.

DWP: mental Health is the new punching bag

So he doesn’t say it, but he does insinuate it:

I have to say I’m particularly concerned about young people. In this regard, there are about a million young people who are on benefits, not all for mental health issues, but quite a number for mental health issues.

I think that is wrong and I don’t just say that because of the spending implications, I say it because if you are on benefits in your 20s, it is going to be extremely difficult to get off benefits for the rest of your life, it is not good and there’s a million young people in that position so there is a moral case for changing that.

Starmer is right in one respect: being on DWP benefits long-term is not good for someone, but only because those on benefits are some of the poorest and most deprived. The way to ensure people aren’t on benefits lifelong is to improve pay and living conditions, not forcing people into unsuitable work, especially disabled people.

Mental health has long taken a beating by successive governments, with Sunak also announcing in 2024 that more had to be done about mental health. But it was never about protecting those with mental health issues. Instead, the focus has always been on delegitimising the issues in the press, with everyone from politicians to press gob-on-a-stick columnists decrying mental health as made up. Even the usually quite left Paul Routledge at the Daily Mirror caused uproar last December by writing:

I believe “mental ’elf” is the “bad back” of the 21st century – easy to self-diagnose, virtually impossible to disprove.

At the time, I told Disability News Service:

I’m especially sickened by seasoned columnists using us as a punching bag when they should know better than to publish unsubstantiated lies about benefits claimants that can cause a lot of harm and add to the public’s distrust of us.

The media delegitimising mental health has made the public trust disabled people less, and made it easier for schemes claiming to ‘support’ disabled people back into work to be pushed through quietly, which coincidentally is what the DWP is already doing.

DWP hassling those who are too sick to work

Last week, it was announced that they’d already started bothering those who are in the Limited Capability for Work Related Activity (LCWRA) group of Universal Credit.

A press release from the DWP announced that job coaches are being redeployed to hassle those who have been found unable to work into signing up for skills courses and applying for new jobs, whether they’re suitable or not.

It was clear that demonising and delegitimising disabled people was the main driver for this announcement. The literal first sentence of it showed that as much

Tens of thousands of people with mental health conditions, bad backs or high blood pressure are among those to be offered skills and employment support thanks to the redeployment of 1,000 specialist Jobcentre staff to help those on sickness benefits.

“Bad backs” has long been a way for the government and media to insinuate that people were faking disability benefits, so lumping mental health in with it is a dirty trick. But it’s one that will get the public on their side as they attempt to force over 65,000 people who’ve already proven they are too sick or disabled to work.

This goes alongside the plans to make anyone under 22 ineligible for LCWRA and Universal Credit, so the younger generation will be completely thrown under the bus. As Reeves announced earlier this week that she wants to force younger working-class people into low-paying jobs.

Can’t work? Well, you can drive an HGV

The new Pathways to Work advisors are already in every Jobcentre and have already started contacting claimants through the UC journal, offering appointments. The press release continued that these new Pathways to Work advisors will:

work with claimants to overcome barriers to work and support them by signposting them to additional employment and skills services

But this isn’t being done by increasing Access to Work or working on making businesses less ableist. No, they want to instead push disabled people into jobs they consider “easier”, such as *checks notes* “IT and HGV driving”.

Yep, that’s right, can’t work a 9 to 5 because you’re in too much pain with your back, or it makes your mental health worse? Have you thought about getting behind the wheel of a 44-tonne vehicle?

The DWP claims that the “offer” is voluntary, but one claimant I spoke to said:

I’ve had two messages in the last fortnight. If you ignore it, they still come so it doesn’t feel voluntary. The advisors have told me before I will struggle to find a job because my pain and migraines mean I spend most of my time in bed so they know I can’t work. They’re preying on the vulnerable

DWP will have even more blood on their hands

At the end of the day, the government may be pretending that they are “helping” or “supporting” disabled people into work, but it’s clear they don’t actually care about doing that in a meaningful way. Otherwise, there’d be a focus on Access to Work, and actually supporting those who do want to work, as opposed to those they know can’t.

The prime minister might think there is a “moral case” to force those with mental health issues into work. But morally speaking, I think we should care far more about the untold number of people with mental health issues who will take their own lives if the cruel DWP are allowed to continue. We’ve already lost too many at their hands.

Featured image via the Canary