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Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has been accused of endorsing “disgraceful” and “wrong” claims about mental health.
The outcry comes after she launched a pamphlet that said the number of claims for mental health problems in Britain has “outpaced any conceivable clinical explanation”.
The Mental Health Foundation attacked the statement as “wrong”, while NHS mental health director Claire Murdoch described the whole section on mental health as “disgraceful”.
It comes just days after she was accused of “stigmatising” autism by backing different claims – in the same pamphlet – which suggested people with the condition get “economic advantages and protections”.
The new row has been sparked by a claim in the same document, which includes contributions from 24 supporters of Ms Badenoch, that “the rise in welfare claims related to mental health, in the UK at least, has outpaced any conceivable clinical explanation.”
But experts hit out at the claim, describing it as “cruel”. Alexa Knight, director of England at the Mental Health Foundation charity, said: “The pamphlet’s statement that there is no conceivable explanation for the growth of people out of work experiencing mental health problems is wrong.”
She added said: “The views put forward in this pamphlet on mental health are outdated, ill-informed and stigmatising.
“It’s also incorrect to imply that spending on mental health in the NHS has increased by more than it should have, just because increases outpaced inflation since 1999. NHS mental health support has been underfunded for decades – including in 1999 – so the fact that spending has outpaced the pitiful increases it used to receive does not mean NHS services are now well funded. The almost 2 million people on waiting lists for mental health support can attest to that.”
Ms Murdoch tweeted that the section on mental health was “a disgraceful, brutal summary/portrayal of mental illness” adding that it was “cruel”.
Liberal Democrat mental health spokesperson Danny Chambers said: “Someone serious about addressing these problems would be putting forward proposals which would support people with mental health issues get back into work. But clearly Kemi Badenoch is not a serious politician.”
The same report which suggested that people with autism get “economic advantages and protections” also said they can receive “better treatment or equipment at school”.
Former Conservative cabinet minister Robert Buckland hit out, saying that the pamphlet should not be “stigmatising or lumping certain categories in with each other”.
Earlier this month Ms Badenoch sparked fury at her party’s annual conference after she claimed that statutory maternity pay was “excessive”.
She later backtracked on the issue but caused further outrage with a claim that tens of thousands of civil servants were so bad at their jobs that they should be in jail.
Representatives for Ms Badenoch declined to comment.