When Conservative MP Elliot Colburn told parliament he’d attempted to take his own life earlier this year, he was amazed at the response he got. Politicians from across the house commended his courage, the Commons applauded him, Keir Starmer shook his hand and Rishi Sunak gave him a hug. However, more surprising was what happened afterwards. Eight members of parliament approached him to say that they, too, had reached that same place of despair. None of them, as far as Colburn knows, have spoken publicly about their experience.
It takes courage for any of us to speak publicly about our mental health, but for politicians there are added considerations. Our political culture comes with unrealistic expectations – that they should be unswervingly strong, independent, omniscient, and never faltering. Any cracks in the armour could be unfairly interpreted as weakness. And, of course, it can give ammunition to opponents – some of whom might even be inside your own party. Many will be keenly aware of the privilege their job brings, given the levels of deprivation suffered by so many in the country, and feel reluctant to detract from those more pressing issues.
I sat down with Colburn recently for a BBC investigation into the mental health of MPs. His words to me reflect what I believe is a broken system built on unforgiving expectations. “My job is the main reason I didn’t reach out for help, or tell anyone,” he told me. “I just did not think that people would be particularly sympathetic. When it comes to an MP’s mental wellbeing, we’re not necessarily seen as having, on a human level, those same set of emotions that other people have.”
Relatively little is known about the extent of mental ill health among serving MPs. A survey of parliamentarians who are standing down at the next election is being conducted jointly by the Apolitical Foundation, Compassion in Politics and 50:50 Parliament, and early results have been handed to the BBC. The numbers are relatively small – MPs are wary of responding to public surveys after a number of institutions used ostensibly official questionnaires to try to shame MPs for their responses, or lack of. Nonetheless, we can see a worrying picture emerging: of the 12 who responded to a question asking whether their job as an MP had adversely affected their mental health, eight said it had. And the MPs all highlighted some common stressors.
Politician after politician told us that – despite what the public might expect – they often feel utterly powerless to change anything. The highly centralised nature of government work, the tight control the executive exacts, and our winner-takes-all style of politics means backbenchers have next to no chance of influencing legislation.
The SNP’s Philippa Whitford, who is leaving parliament at the next election, says that since Brexit, Westminster politics is broken. “I think that is particularly due to the changes where, holding the government to account, the balance of power has changed. Parliamentarians have lost power.”
Across the aisle, Conservative MP Charles Walker, a pioneering mental health champion who has spoken openly about his own struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), tells me the House of Commons is a “mausoleum of disappointment”. That disappointment is easy to understand: in the last decade or so, just 5% of backbench legislation makes it on to the statute book.
Of course, parliament doesn’t exist in a vacuum. As one former Conservative minister, who has asked for their identity not to be revealed, tells me: “The malaise within parliament is no different from the one that lies outside its walls. If the very place that people are looking for to be the change is suffering the same malaise, a sort of collective national nervous breakdown, then we have a problem.”
In terms of parliament as a workplace, you’d be hard pressed to design a more effective system to make people ill. Parliament’s adversarial nature pits politicians against each other, triggering a fight-or-flight response. Even the design of the Commons – with banks of MPs ranged against one another and the two speakers at the dispatch box deliberately kept two swords’-length apart – is more suitable for a gladiatorial contest than reasoned debate.
Then there’s the whipping system, which in any other environment would be sanctioned as a system of bribery and coercion. Anne Milton, former Conservative deputy whip, agrees that it can’t continue in its current form: “Absolutely, it has got to change. Coercion, control, all those things, in my view, have no place in a modern government,” she told me. On top of that there is the set-piece weekly Punch and Judy show, AKA prime minister’s questions, which skews public perception of politicians and shows nothing of the cross-party cooperation that takes place behind the scenes.
Where does this all stem from? I first reported on politics for the BBC when Margaret Thatcher was still in power. In the almost four decades I’ve spent observing Westminster, the more convinced I’ve felt that tradition has become a hiding place for prejudices and behaviours that would be dismissed as abusive and unprofessional in any other workplace.
As Debbie Abrahams MP, the Labour co-chair of the Compassionate Politics all-party parliamentary group, says: “For somebody not in politics, it’s a difficult thing to explain. It’s all geared about winning something, whether it’s an election [or] a vote … So, it is all about power. It isn’t about supporting wellbeing.”
Previously unpublished data from the House of Commons shared with the BBC affirms the picture of a growing mental health crisis within Westminster. Mental health, which until three years ago didn’t feature among the top five reasons for MPs using the parliamentary health and wellbeing service, is now one of the top two reasons MPs are seeking help. That’s good news, if those in need of help are seeking it, but treating the symptoms without addressing the causes will get us nowhere.
I’m convinced that we must urgently look at how politics affects politicians. With existential challenges like climate crisis, war and mass migration hovering on our nation’s horizon, we need politics to be psychologically healthy, with politicians at the top of their game managing a fully functioning, effective system of governance.
So, what can be done? It’s not rocket science. An independent HR system that supports MPs in governance and leadership, mandatory training, enforceable standards of conduct, an independent ethics commission; electronic voting, which would allow MPs to vote without being pushed, shoved and cajoled by colleagues into the voting chambers a modern parliament building that’s fit for purpose; an overhaul of outdated language; measures to prevent the talking out of private member’s bills; systems that are designed to maximise efficiency and de-escalate conflict.
Westminster politics has hitrock bottom. The question is will it surrender? Will it relinquish the habits and behaviours that have got it there? The stakes for all of us who care about democracy are high. And if nothing changes, they will only get higher.
Jennifer Nadel is a journalist and co-director of Compassion in Politics
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
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