The Tories never run out of scapegoats. They will blame Britain’s problems on refugees, trans people, climate activists or any other group except for those who actually have much power.

This looks set to continue when Jeremy Hunt gives his Autumn Statement in November, if a front page story in the Financial Times this weekend is anything to go by.

According to the FT, “Chancellor Jeremy Hunt plans to use the Autumn Statement to tackle the sharp rise in people unable to work because of mental health issues”. The article of full of figures about the amount of money spent on sickness and disability benefits, and money supposedly lost to the economy by people being unable to work.

The Daily Express reports that such costs have led Hunt to decide to prioritise plans to “help” people with mental health problems.

What is completely missing from these reports is any information about how he will help them. The Financial Times states that Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is considering “using tax breaks and subsidies for workplace occupational health services”.

There is no suggestion that ministers are considering increasing funding for mental health services, nor any detail about what “workplace occupational health services” will provide.

All of which suggests that we’re back to the tired old tactic of demonising people on benefits rather than actually supporting people with mental health problems or helping them to recover.

There are clear hints of this in the story that appeared in the FT. It reports that Hunt wants to keep people “in jobs and off benefits”. An anonymous government source is quoted, claiming that, “People are currently being channelled into the benefit system when the reality is lots of them could work”.

This is nonsense. It sets up “benefits” and “work” as opposites and alternatives, an inaccuracy encouraged by almost everyone who attacks people who receive benefits. The truth is that many people in receipt of benefits are also in employment. This includes benefits related to disability and health, such as Personal Independence Payments (PIP). This is a benefit that is supposed to be based on recognition of the extra costs of being disabled: it is not about whether or not you are working. While Jeremy Hunt and his press officers may have an interest in fudging this reality, reporters on the Financial Times should be well-informed enough to have pointed it out. .

Applying for PIP is a tortuous, demeaning and extremely stressful process that some people abandon despite being entitled to it. Anyone who manages to complete the application process in the midst of mental distress should be given a medal, let alone an entitlement to benefits.

Mental health services are woefully and dangerously underfunded throughout the UK, particularly in England, where they are the direct responsibility of the UK government. As someone with mental health problems, I have been delighted to see the growth in awareness of mental health issues in the last 20 years – and dismayed to see mental health services being cut at the same time. In recent years, I have seen friends with severe mental health problems unable to access the support that they desperately need.

Hunt is right about one thing: mental health is massively important issue and mental health problems affect an alarming number of people. But tackling Britain’s mental health crisis would mean acknowledging and addressing its causes. This is something that Hunt and his colleagues won’t do – because many of their own policies have contributed heavily to the problem. High levels of mental distress are hardly surprising in a context of spiralling poverty, the legacy of austerity policies, the effects of the pandemic and the reality of NHS underfunding and excessive waiting lists.

We need to address mental health problems if we are to be a compassionate society, and because life is better for all of us when we support each other. This, rather than the economic costs of time off work, is the most important reason for tacking mental health seriously.

However, even by the Tories’ own logic, the underfunding of mental health services is bad economics, given that it means more people taking time off working, or not being employed, because of poor mental health. But for all Hunt’s economic talk, there is no sign that Hunt is going to provide any more funding for mental health services, and certainly not to the degree that is needed or anywhere near it.

This policy bears all the signs of an attempt to apportion blame rather than to solve a problem.

Disabled benefit recipients, including people with mental health problems, were among the favourite scapegoats of the Cameron government from 2010 onwards, as they talked about cutting the deficit and in effect demanded that the poorest people in society, rather than the richest, should pay the price for doing so.

But with the Tory government’s popularity plummeting and with greater understanding of mental health issues in society at large, I am not sure it will work again. Of course there are still people who will lap up right-wing newspaper claims about benefit recipients stealing their money, but I suspect Hunt will be disappointed if he thinks that demonising people with mental health problems will be as easy as it was a decade ago. Nonetheless, we must be ready to speak out to stand in solidarity with each other and to say that the best way to tackle mental health problems is to change the policies and structures that fuel them.