145 MPs sign up for 8-week mindfulness course 'to help with policy-making'

A government minister has cited mindfulness as being “important” aid to policy development as it emerged that 145 MPs signed up to an eight-week course on the Buddhist practice.

Sports minister Tracey Crouch was speaking at a conference in Westminster, where she explained that she had taken up mindfulness when she was trying to come off anti-depressants.

She said since starting, she has become "a major advocate of what mindfulness does, not just to you as a person but also how we can use it professionally".

According to The Guardian, 145 MPs have so far taken the course in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.

The therapy is prescribed as a treatment for depression and those who take the course are 31 per cent less likely to relapse.

Some people believe that mindfulness could be used to improve political decision-making and debate in the future.

Ms Crouch said: "I have become a major advocate of what mindfulness does, not just to you as a person but also how we can use it professionally.

As minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport we have been very passionate about mindfulness. We do practise it regularly in the department."

Political author Sir Anthony Seldon also attended the meeting and said mindfulness was the “one quality missing from the heart of No 10”.

“Decisions such as the Iraq war, the way the Brexit vote was handled, the reaction to Grenfell Tower: the quality of mindfulness and heartfulness is missing,” he said.