Sunak accused of making mental illness ‘another front in the culture wars’

Rishi Sunak has been accused of making mental ill health “another front in the culture wars”, as critics warned his plan to curb benefits for some with anxiety and depression was an assault on disabled people.

In a speech on welfare, the prime minister said he wanted to explore withdrawing a major cash benefit claimed by people living with mental health problems and replacing it with treatment.

Launching a review of the personal independence payment (Pip), a non-means-tested benefit helping disabled people with the extra costs of their health problems, Sunak said Britain was suffering from a “sicknote culture”.

Charities also raised the alarm about Sunak’s rhetoric on mental ill health, after the prime minister said there was a “risk of over-medicalising what are essentially the everyday worries and challenges of life” in the welfare system.

Trade unions for doctors and nurses expressed concerns about Sunak’s suggestion that there was a risk of “over-medicalising” mental health conditions, although he insisted that clinical decisions about diagnoses were always a matter for professionals.

“The prime minister’s overtures about ‘sicknote culture’ will be deeply offensive to a profession hit hard by long Covid and a spiralling mental health crisis.