The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has made a number of announcements around departmental budgets and cuts to the welfare system.
Mark Rowland, Chief Executive at the Mental Health Foundation, said:
“The short term cuts announced in the Spring Statement – in particular the cuts to welfare spending – risk being a disaster for the nation’s mental health in the long term. By choosing to cut benefits when they are already at extraordinarily low levels, the UK government is going to accelerate a mental health crisis that they are already struggling to tackle. These decisions by the Chancellor will lead to worse health, preventable premature deaths, and do nothing to improve the lives of those on the lowest incomes.
“The UK’s ongoing mental health crisis has many of its roots in the cuts to public services which dominated the 2010s. These cuts left few, if any, of the building blocks of good mental health intact. As departmental budgets were cut, our communities became splintered, public health measures vanished, average wages stagnated, and quality housing became more unaffordable than in living memory. More than 2 million people are now waiting for mental health support, with our health services clearly not coping with the rise. Planned spending needs to increase if we are to better tackle the causes of poor mental health, not decrease.
“The cuts to Universal Credit, along with the restrictions to PIP eligibility, must not go ahead. The promised cross-government mental health plan – which would require the Treasury to consider the country’s mental health needs – must be delivered as soon as possible. And the UK government must make the decision to shift to an economic approach which prioritises the needs of ordinary people and invests in their lives, instead of making cuts that fall on the shoulders of those who can bear them the least.”