BRITAIN’S BOSSES are afraid of the mentally ill, as though depression is catching or stress contagious. Those not frightened are usually scornful. To many employers, mental health problems are either a sinister sickness or a last hiding place for the incurably lazy.

The Government’s own figures show that an astonishing 60 per cent of employers admit they would not consider employing someone with mental health problems, while a third of those who have suffered mental illness claim they have been fired or forced to resign from their job.

And this attitude is an enormous barrier to the Government’s latest efforts to cut the number of people on incapacity benefit and return a million to work. Nearly 40 per cent of incapacity benefit claimants have mental health problems, including stress and depression. And it is these people who are the likely victims of the last example of blatant employer prejudice in Britain today.

Mental health conditions are not uncommon. One in four people will develop a mental illness, and three in ten workers face some kind of mental health problem in any given year. And businesses, of course, pay lip service to the problem. Almost all the 800 businesses surveyed by the CBI said it should be a company concern, and most said that the mental health of employees should be a priority. Yet Mind, the mental health charity, found recently that fewer than a tenth of companies even bother having a policy to deal with mental illness.

People with mental health difficulties still find themselves shunned by employers and the stigma can make it almost impossible to fight back. Many of those claiming incapacity benefit for mental health problems want jobs, but how can the Government return thousands of potentially productive people to work when employers don’t want them?

Of course there are laws in place to prevent discrimination, but if the Government is to have any chance of getting a million people off benefit and into work it must force companies to face up to their abject failings. And the Government in turn must ensure that the benefits system itself stays supportive enough to make the transition back to work a smooth one. If not, their plans will simply collapse.

Kath Raymond was a former adviser to David Blunkett