Sorry, you don't have "bad nerves"
and my night out with Rod Liddle
We Conservatives believe in conserving1.
Above all things, the most precious gift to conserve is freedom.
The bedrock of freedom is financial security which can only be achieved for most of us through work.
Work itself is not the meaning of life, but there is no meaning in life without work.
Freedom is only ever one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan
Hard, purposeful work done well makes people happy. There must be struggle to sharpen the sweetness of the ensuing satisfaction.
Some on the left say that people would work purely for intrinsic rewards therefore we should redistribute gains from high earners in the name of fairness.
But we Conservatives are connoisseurs of human nature in all its faulty glory - and we know that is false. People are motivated by financial incentive. It is not selfish, it is beautiful and clear.
How many times have you heard someone say; “its not about the money, but…” Frankly, it is about the money. It is a shame that it is seen as taboo to say it.
Designing policies to make work pay, and thus protect the freedom to work is something that Conservatives have always held as the highest moral obligation.
In 1975 Mrs Thatcher said:
“The person who is prepared to work hardest should get the greatest rewards and keep them after tax. We should back the workers and not the shirkers: that it is not only permissible but praiseworthy to want to benefit your own family by your own efforts."
Welfare and benefits are necessary in today’s world. But the pandemic has loosened the social contract between the working tax payer and the benefit dependent. We can’t ask an shrinking pool of workers to pay for a growing cohort of people who cannot or will not work. Benefits must only ever be a last resort for those truly unable to work, never a lifestyle choice caused by faulty wiring in our system.
After the Chancellor delivered his Spring Budget, I spoke to welcome it in Parliament, but highlighted my concerns over rising numbers off work for mental health reasons.
Over the course of 14 years, the Conservatives have made huge strides in reversing Labour’s something for nothing culture, reforming benefits through the introduction of universal credit.
This isn’t a new mission for us. It was Keith Joseph who first articulated the concept of the cycle of deprivation, and set about helping people to break out of it.
Every time we have made reforms to welfare, our political opponents have howled and said we are cruel and heartless. It is fake outrage - the true moral failure is to let people languish on benefits and not expect any better from them, which is Labour’s legacy; when they last left office we saw record levels of unemployment in every age group particularly young people.
Now there are record numbers of people in work, including record numbers of women. Government analysis has consistently shown that universal credit is having a positive impact on labour market participation for all groups including single parents and other vulnerable groups who face the most barriers to returning to work.
However we are increasingly seeing a category of people who are economically inactive. They are dependent on the state, they aren’t free, and this is very sad and damaging.
A significant cohort of these people self report2 mental health problems as a reason for their sickness and worklessness.
This started before Covid, but has so far not shown signs of stabilising back to pre pandemic levels.
For the under 35s, its the biggest factor.
This is the pressing challenge that government faces today.
I have two psychology degrees and trained and worked as a counsellor and I fully understand mental health and ill health.
That is why I was really shocked when I saw the terminology used in the labour force survey3 for the mental health self reporting categories: “depression, bad nerves or anxiety.”
Bad nerves?
Both anxiety and depression are clinically recognised conditions. “Bad nerves” is not. There is no data explaining how bad nerves are defined, assessed, treated, understood or prevented as a separate condition from depression and anxiety. I was so exercised by this that I tabled a series of parliamentary questions to make sure I wasn’t wrong.
“Having bad nerves” is a totally meaningless phrase. Nobody knows what it is, so how can people decide they are unfit to work if they have it? The data is aggregated, so its impossible to know how many people are using this as a reason not to work.
I have bad nerves when I speak in Parliament. My constituents have bad nerves when they are navigating the day to day challenges of juggling work and family. The phrase itself reminds me of something out of a good housewife manual of the 50s.
Frankly, I do not accept that bad nerves is a reason to be on sickness benefits, or off work. The best cure for bad nerves is to get back to work and have something else to focus on - rather than your bad nerves.
It seems that the ONS who collects the data is actually now removing this phrase. Good. You can see their letter to me here.
More generally, I worry that following the pandemic we have seen a trend to over medicalise normal ups and downs of daily life, almost as though its possible to live in a state of blissful utopia, and if there is any interruption to paradise it is a condition requiring help from the government.
Of course that is nonsense.
The human condition is mostly a state of pain and fear. If we are fortunate we will experience love and happiness in small interludes.
The closing section of “The Leopard”, Lampedusa’s evocative and wonderful Sicilian novel, depicts the final moments of the Leopard himself, now an old man approaching death. He muses to himself:
“I’m seventy three years old, and all in all I may have lived, really lived, a total of two, three at the most. And the pains, the boredom, how long had they been? Useless to try and make himself count those; the whole of the rest; seventy years.”
I want to be very clear, I do not criticise anyone who is suffering from any mental health condition, including bad nerves. If we have a poorly designed system with vague labelling and unclear diagnostic pathways it is not people’s fault if they respond to structural incentives that we have designed.
But we must not have bogus badly defined phrases and cod psychology as a pathway to a lifetime on benefits. I am pleased to see Mel Stride tackling this now - and getting a kicking from the usual suspects.
Predictably, they were also out in force to kick both me and Rod Liddle on Question Time; but for once, he got more of a roasting than the person from the government:)
The life-giving drive to work is “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower” (Dylan Thomas)
Let us have the courage to confront the system which would label all those who have lost their life force as mentally ill. Instead, let us help them reframe their pain and misery as gifts which will strengthen their green fuse.
Painting is “The Human Condition” by Rene Magritte, 1933
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/economicinactivity/articles/risingillhealthandeconomicinactivitybecauseoflongtermsicknessuk/2019to2023
https://www.ons.gov.uk/surveys/informationforhouseholdsandindividuals/householdandindividualsurveys/labourforcesurvey