Without an overhaul of workplace rights, Tory plans for Mental Health First Aid are barely a sticking plaster.

Earlier this week, a formidable-looking list of unions, employers and charities signed an open letter to Theresa May urging her to push forward with the Conservative Party’s Manifesto promise to make Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) a mandatory requirement in workplaces.

This move would involve training selected workers in how to help their colleagues with mental health problems, in the same way designated workers are currently trained in physical first aid. The letter’s authors argue it would give mental health the same weight as physical health at work.

But it doesn’t. And it’s important people understand what this policy actually means before backing it.

If, instead of requiring construction sites to provide hard hats, we asked them to train workers in dressing major head wounds, would you think this was acceptable?

What if first aiders were told to signpost injured workers to NHS services that are so depleted they might wait 18 months for help?

This is the physical equivalent of the MHFA proposal. Training workers in first aid – whether physical, or psychological – is essential, but if it is not accompanied by steps to prevent work-related illness or accidents, nor steps to adequately treat work-related illness or accidents, it becomes absurd.

Perhaps that’s why research from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that “there is no evidence that the introduction of MHFA training in workplaces has resulted in sustained actions in those trained, or that it has improved the wider management of mental ill-health.”

We estimate that 10% of suicides – that’s 600 every year – are now driven by work-related issues. To arrive at that number, we had to look to international research from countries like France, Australia and Canada, because in the UK, nobody counts how many people end their lives due to problems at work.

Hazards has seen cases of extreme workplace bullying, after which the victim, on ending their lives, had pointed to that bullying as the reason they could no longer bear to go on.

Others wrote the name of their employers as their final act, or took their lives after trauma experienced in the line of duty for which they were not given adequate support.

None of these cases were recorded as work-related fatalities, and none of their employers were investigated as a result.

Work-related stress is, ostensibly, a priority for the and Safety Executive, but none of its guidance on the issue is enforced. Perhaps that’s not surprising given that the HSE budget has been cut by 50%, and preventative workplace inspections by 96%.

What the government should be doing

The first thing the government could do if it really wanted to give mental health the same weight as physical health in the workplace is enforce the HSE’s stress management standards, and that includes increasing funding, inspections, prosecutions and prohibitions.

The second thing it could do is require employers to report work-related mental health issues through the RIDDOR process – that’s the mandatory requirement employers already have to record incidences of disease and injury in their workplace.

The fact there is no current requirement on employers to record things such as work-related suicide is why it’s difficult to research and prevent it in this country. This isn’t a radical idea. In France, for instance, where there is any suspicion that a suicide was work-related, an investigation into the employment environment is held.

The third thing it could do is to make use of the best resources employers currently have to keep workplaces safe – that is, trade unions. Again and again, research indicates that a safety rep at the workplace has a significant impact on the number of accidents, injuries and illnesses reported at that workplace. That’s because safety reps have a vital role in ensuring laws are not breached, and work with the employer to solve high-risk situations before anyone gets hurt.

But the MHFA policy on its own circumvents collective action – relying entirely on individualistic, reactive responses that, more often than not, will involve signposting workers to services that, for all intents and purposes, simply don’t exist. The government should make the presence of a trade union safety rep mandatory at every workplace, as well as providing MHFA.

And lastly, it should step back and really consider why work-related mental illness has hit crisis point. The UN has just reported that a fifth of the population lives in poverty and 60% of those are in work. One in ten people in employment do not have the security of guaranteed hours.

A broken system

It is the UK’s wrong-headed framework of labour law that has brought us to this, after three decades of laws designed to squash trade unionism, and an enforcement system so weak that two-thirds of workers who win a case at tribunal never receive their full compensation.

There is an urgent need for reform – for better trade union laws, stronger workers’ rights, and opportunities for workers’ voices to be heard. Recommendations from think tank the Institute of Employment Rights outline exactly what is needed to bring our laws up to international standards.

It is clear from the support received for the open letter that the public backs mental health support at work. So the government should take this opportunity to make real change.

MHFA is a sticking plaster solution to a suppurating sore. If you want to improve our health, Theresa May, then stop making us ill.

Janet Newsham is part of the Hazards Campaign. 

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