Daniel Hannan is Director-General of the Institute of Economic Affairs
Two thirds of incapacity benefits applications involve mental or behavioural disorders, and 20,000 claimants are being added to the rolls each month. The backlog of people waiting for mental health treatment on the NHS stands at an astonishing 1.9 million.
Quite apart from the individual suffering represented by those figures, there is a colossal national cost. We are spending around £30 billion each year on various incapacity benefits. By the end of the decade, on present trends, it will be £48 billion.
What is going on? Were hundreds of thousands of us driven insane by two years of lockdown? Have we become a nation of Rab C Nesbitts, gaming the benefits system by feigning invisible conditions? Or is it that we are belatedly opening up about disorders we used to suffer in silence?
