Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Labour Party boss Liz Kendall has told the BBC about the government’s plans to coerce people with “serious” mental health problems into work. This involves sticking job advisers into NHS hospitals.
So now, in the hellhole that is Labour’s “changed” UK, unemployed claimants will get dangerous weight loss jabs to suppress hunger. Meanwhile, severely mentally ill patients in hospital will have job advisers haranguing them at their bedsides with top tips on how to write a CV.
DWP mental health plans: job advisors for “serious” patients
The Canary previously highlighted the government’s latest back-to-work bluster:
On 3 October, both the Guardian and the Times announced the Labour government’s new scheme to post job advisors into NHS hospitals. Of course, this is part of its broader plans for pushing long-term sick people back to work.
So once again, the government is blurring the lines between the DWP and the NHS. Obviously, its latest ploy will mean people medical support for mental health conditions will face the prospect of employment advisors telling them to get a job to fix their problems.
Kendall has now spilled the beans on this further. She told the BBC that:
This is for people with serious mental health problems
Moreover, she added how:
the results of getting people into work have been dramatic, and the evidence clearly shows that it is better for their mental health.
Most tellingly though was that fact Kendall linked the DWP mental health scheme in her interview with benefits conditionality. As the BBC wrote:
She indicated some people will lose their benefits, saying the “benefit system can have a real impact on whether you incentivise or disincentivise work”
In other words, if you have serious mental health problems, Kendall thinks work will fix them. And if it doesn’t? Tough luck, the state won’t give you a financial safety net.
In Kendall’s ode to Iain Duncan-Smith, it’s all to push down the so-called benefits bill, of course. In reality, it’s not disabled people with mental health problems bleeding the economy dry. It’s the parasitic blood-letting bosses sucking the well-being, self-worth, and every drop of profit it can from the working class.
Show us this ‘evidence’
Here’s an idea, the government could tackle poverty pushing people into serious mental health crises in the first place:
Maybe if we funded treatment properly, and didn’t threaten “seriously mentally ill” people in crisis with the “incentive” of losing benefits (food, housing, clothing), I dunno, might work better?
BBC News – Mental health patients to get job coach visitshttps://t.co/eVQKaTnOfX
— Ryan Campbell (@treesareniceish) October 16, 2024
Cough *two-child limit on benefits* cough *winter fuel payment* cough.
One person on X wondered where this ‘evidence’ Kendall was crowing about regarding her DWP mental health plans actually was:
I would love to see the actual hard evidence that sending job coaches onto mental health wards works because I very much doubt we’ll be seeing it in NICE guidelines anytime soon. https://t.co/36pWLps5r9
— Alex (@_AlexBPsych) October 16, 2024
The Canary revealed before that it supposedly came from a hospital already doing this. And it just so happens to be headed by an especially notorious psychologist and NHS director – Simon Wessely.
What’s Wessely all about? Trivialising physical and mental illnesses, naturally. You can read more about him here.
As for firm hard proof however, we’d also like to see the stats and studies she’s basing her DWP mental health plans off of. We’re betting it’s full of bunk, and as many massaged statistics as private sector health corporations that have massaged the Labour Party’s ego – and wallet.
Pawning sick people off for profit
Let’s also not forget that this is just another ploy to pawn off chronically ill and disabled people to the corporate capitalists. As the Canary previously pointed out, the NHS Maudsley scheme Kendall so avidly praised operated like some market-place of mental health patients for big business.
Those who’ve already transformed mental health patients into its profit-making dogsbody included:
big polluter Gatwick Airport. The other is the profiteering Royal Mail Group, that makes big money for its bosses, while shitting on its employees.
So, Labour is lining up unemployed people like lab rats for weight loss drugs, and people with mental health problems for the job market. All the while, it’s poking holes in the so-called social safety net for chronically ill and disabled people. Needless to say, making benefits more punitive and conditional is only going to compound people’s mental health problems further:
Those with severe mental health difficulties are already petrified of the DWP & having support withdrawn. This is going to cause new & untold suffering to those whose lives are already shattered.
This Labour government is truly repulsive. Irredeemably terrible people https://t.co/oA0mdpx3Kt
— LiLBaz (@lil_bazza) October 16, 2024
Kendall’s callous comments come right after her department released a cache of 30 reports the previous Tory administration buried.
Crucially, the Canary’s Steve Topple highlighted how one of those exposed that the DWP’s own processes were making claimant’s physical and mental health worse. And that report dropped only the week after the inquest into Laura Winham’s death. She died of starvation and her remains went undiscovered for nearly three years. As Topple pointed out:
It seems the stress of the DWP’s processes compounded Laura’s situation and may well have contributed to her lack of money, therefore her death.
Not that the Labour government will take any notice of all this.
Kendall’s DWP strong-man stunt will actually kill people.
That’s the firm evidence she doesn’t want you to see regarding her DWP mental health plans. It’s all there in the department’s own reports.
Job advisors and jabs? Just another day in red Tory benefit claimant-bashing Britain. We’re only just past 100 days in – but it’s the punching down on disabled people the Canary and others predicted all along.
Feature image via Youtube – Maudsley NHS/Ben Claimant/ the Canary
