Mental Health and Unemployment — House of Commons, 2015-02-24
Topic: Health
Adam Afriyie (Conservative, Centre-right): I am not sure the Government have ignored it. I have been in meetings where it has been carefully discussed, so it is certainly on the agenda. I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s general point, however, and I am sure we will get to it on the other side of the upcoming election. Thus far, the focus has been on shaping the overall system in the right way, but unquestionably it will need refinement to ensure that in the first level of interaction the system quickly identifies people who might require a greater focus on their mental health and well-being than the average person I can give the hon. Gentleman the commitment that once we are through this short period before the election, and if we are both fortunate enough to be here afterwards, I will be happy to work with him and others in the Chamber to ensure that mental health conditions are better recognised or integrated within the process. We had a huge mountain to climb just to change the system in the first instance, but greater sensitivity is certainly needed now Four or five years ago, in Windsor, I knocked on the door of a very elderly lady. She had found in her letter box a form connected with a consultation on whether a local development should proceed. She was clearly struggling with a mental health condition at the time, and was agonising over whether she should fill in the massive form. There was another form from the council, and another relating to planning. I almost did not have the heart, but just about had the heart, to say to her, "The form is merely about a consultation, and, given the hundreds of forms that will be sent back, what you write on this one may have only a very small impact on the outcome. You might be better off seeing your family, having relatives to visit, and actually enjoying your life." What I gleaned from that encounter was that having to deal with lengthy forms and deeply bureaucratic processes may—unnecessarily, in many cases—take away the quality of people’s lives, particularly when those people are unemployed. That, I believe, should be a secondary focus for us, and for any future Government. We should think about the way in which we ask people to participate in our bureaucratic procedures to obtain assistance and return to work. We should ask ourselves whether the length of forms is a problem, and whether matters could be dealt with a little more quickly on the telephone or face to face, given that that some people might be struggling with a challenge at the time I know that we are having a quiet afternoon in the Chamber today, but I think that we have a responsibility to continue to talk about this issue—not only in debates such as this, but in the context of every brief that we may hold, every Committee in which we may participate, and every Bill that we may examine. We must keep at the forefront of our minds the fact that a very large proportion of the British population are struggling with mental health challenges. Every policy that we create must be designed to reflect that, and to accommodate such people. Here is one more idea that may be of use at some point in the future. I love the idea of the market. I love the idea of businesses competing to hire employees, and I love the idea that competing small businesses—as well as one or two larger ones—that are desperate to hire staff at a time of low unemployment will one day place an imprimatur on their websites and recruitment pages, declaring that theirs is a mental health-friendly working environment. Indeed, it would be curious if they did not do so. I believe that if small and medium-sized businesses—indeed, all businesses—do not take that route, they will be hamstringing themselves and preventing themselves from taking advantage of the best employees that they can recruit from the marketplace This is my vision for politics. I want to see a country that is at ease with itself, and with people from different backgrounds and different walks of life. A country that is at ease with itself must acknowledge that, at any one time, a large minority of its population will face mental health challenges, but that those people are equally part of society. The policies that we create in this place must be user-friendly, and take account of people from all sorts of backgrounds and with all sorts of conditions I am optimistic about the future. Why? Because there is no doubt that Labour, Liberal Democrat, Independent and Conservative Members all recognise that the issue of mental health represents a serious challenge for a large proportion of the population, and I am confident that any future Government will pay more attention to it than we have in the past.