{"id":91957,"date":"2026-04-28T09:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T08:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=91957"},"modified":"2026-04-28T12:00:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T11:00:51","slug":"tony-blairs-assault-on-the-anxious-depressed-and-those-with-adhd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/04\/28\/tony-blairs-assault-on-the-anxious-depressed-and-those-with-adhd\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Blair’s assault on the anxious, depressed and those with ADHD"},"content":{"rendered":"

To continue my theme of health, care and Labour's incoherence, already well established this morning<\/a>, comments in the media forced me to look at a new report from the so-called Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (otherwise, known as the Tony Blair Institute for the Preservation of Wealth Amongst Those Already Possessed Of It) on the subject of what it describes as \"An Emergency Handbrake for UK Welfare: Stabilising Spending, Supporting People<\/a>\".<\/p>\n

I admit that, so far, I have only been able to read the introduction to this, but it leaves me profoundly worried.<\/p>\n

The report, on the surface, is a paper about welfare reform. In reality, it is something rather different: it is an attempt to revive a deeply familiar neoliberal narrative that treats people claiming social security as the real problem in our society, whilst ignoring why so many are unwell, insecure, and unable to sustain work in the first place.<\/p>\n

It also seeks to support the core neoliberal idea that it is the individual, and therefore personal, duty of everyone within a society to make themselves fit and well for the purposes of work, with the demands of which they must comply so that the value of their compliant and unquestioning labour may be extracted so that the wealth of a tiny minority within the society in which they live might be increased, seemingly without limit.<\/p>\n

The report's argument is straightforward.<\/p>\n

First, it claims that too many people are moving onto benefits, particularly since the pandemic, with almost 1,000 people a day reportedly signing on.<\/p>\n

Second, it argues that many of the conditions now leading to claims, and most especially those with mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression or protected characteristics such as ADHD,\u00a0 should be classified as \u201cnon-work-limiting\u201d, meaning that the default assumption should be that claimants remain fit for work and therefore should not receive income support.<\/p>\n

Third, it suggests that this could be implemented quickly through secondary legislation as an \u201cemergency handbrake\u201d before wider reform takes place.<\/p>\n

And fourth, it argues that this is justified both morally and fiscally. The moral claim is that work is supposedly good for people and that remaining outside the labour market is harmful. The fiscal claim is that incapacity and disability benefits are becoming too expensive, with spending projected to rise sharply.<\/p>\n

The Institute proposes a three-part response:<\/p>\n