Forum Home → Discussion → Other benefit issues → Thread
Lord Freud: Some disabled people are “not worth” the minimum wage ...
“David Cameron has been forced to disassociate himself from the welfare reform minister Lord Freud after Ed Miliband revealed that he told a fringe meeting at the recent Tory conference that some disabled people are “not worth” the minimum wage.”
“Labour is urging a welfare minister to resign amid reports he suggested people with disabilities could be paid less than the minimum wage.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29628557
I can think of a few government ministers who are also “not worth the minimum wage”!
‘nuff said!
Its fine now
He has apologised….....
Sack him and the councillor setting people up as sole traders to duck the minimum wage.
Absolutely! Couldn’t agree more!
Still, its a useful hint at what we may have to deal with should the Tories get re-elected next year!
Was this intended well? As I understood him, he was suggesting that people (with disabilities) may be willing to work for less than the minimum wage and that they should not be prevented from doing so. On the one hand, this would help reduce the 50% unemployment rate among disabled people. On the other hand, it would be vulnerable to abuse by employers and reinforce the image of disabled people as second-class citizens.
There is already a mechanism for paying below the minimum wage for apprentices. I read this as an extension of this. Of course, working in Tesco for £2 an hour is not quite the same as being an apprentice, far from it.
All that said, I think this was a gaff and given Lord Freud is not the most popular man in the world anyway, it could mean a firm shove in the direction of the door.
This is the same bloke who was discussing IB to ESA conversions, and referred to human beings as “Stock”
The guy does not view the poor/disabled/poor as people worthy of the respect they are entitled to.
What is even more worrying is that the minister for welfare reform doesn’t understand the benefits for which he is responsible!
Not quite the same issue but what is the purpose of the disability route to WTC and the ‘permittted work’ rules in ESA inperfect though they are?
I this the same government that is removing SDP under UC and making the mobility component of PIP much tougher than DLA (and thereby access to Motability etc etc)?
And what happened to the 75% rule for earnings under IS (however inappropriate it was in practice)?
Is this the same minister responsible for the shambles that is PIP and what about Atos & WCA?
Readers can fill in a few more pages of examples!
And as Cameron made it personal during PM questions - I don’t doubt for one minute he and his family experienced the same emotional issues caring for a disabled familiy member as other families. But as a millionairre I would bet he didn’t experience the same issues accessing and providing appropriate care or just trying to cover the day to day costs etc of disability.
amidst all the ongoing media coverage, this caught my eye ...
“Downing Street loath to lose Lord Freud who is seen to have a full grasp of the universal credit reforms ....”
Let’s hope that soon it is “Downing Street loses loathsome Lord Freud for having no grasp of fundamental decency”
What is even more worrying is that the minister for welfare reform doesn’t understand the benefits for which he is responsible!
Not quite the same issue but what is the purpose of the disability route to WTC and the ‘permittted work’ rules in ESA inperfect though they are?
I this the same government that is removing SDP under UC and making the mobility component of PIP much tougher than DLA (and thereby access to Motability etc etc)?
And what happened to the 75% rule for earnings under IS (however inappropriate it was in practice)?
Is this the same minister responsible for the shambles that is PIP and what about Atos & WCA?
Readers can fill in a few more pages of examples!
And as Cameron made it personal during PM questions - I don’t doubt for one minute he and his family experienced the same emotional issues caring for a disabled familiy member as other families. But as a millionairre I would bet he didn’t experience the same issues accessing and providing appropriate care or just trying to cover the day to day costs etc of disability.
My thoughts exactly Peter.
From the Huffington Post:
Disabled people in Britain have caused controversy by suggesting that Lord Freud is “not worth the full £300 daily expenses” he is entitled to.
“There is a small group of people who are not worth £300 a day… and that is Tory peers like Lord Freud,” one told HuffPost UK Comedy.
“We cannot have people simply loafing about, doing nothing and expecting the state to finance their lifestyles,” said another.
“Freud is typical of the something-for-nothing culture that permeates Britain today.”
And from the Daily Mash:
A GOVERNMENT minister has urged disabled people to rent out their wheelchairs when they are not sitting in them.
Welfare minister Lord Freud said wheelchair users could supplement their income when they are asleep or on the lavatory.
He added: “Wheelchairs look like they would be great fun, but I don’t want to buy one. I would be wiling to pay maybe £20 an hour.
“Disabled people would then be running their own businesses, rather than cluttering-up offices and getting in the way of people who are at least worth the minimum wage.”
Martin Bishop, a wheelchair user from Peterborough, said: “If I rent it out between 11pm and 7am I could make £160. That’s not bad. I assume there are millions of people who want to rent a wheelchair in the middle of night.
“And it usually takes me about half an hour to have a ****, so there’s another tenner.
“Who is Lord Freud and why hasn’t he been promoted?”
Sorry to fetch you back to reality, but….....
What a disgusting spectacle it was to see and hear the Labour benches in the Commons coming out in full hearted support from the besieged leader Ed Milliband……. to attack that essentially decent, hardworking and thoughtful Minister (who takes no Ministerial salary) Lord Freud.
So lets fill in the background to all this….
…What Lord Freud was being asked about was whether there are handicapped people who cannot produce enough to justify in purely economic terms a wage of £6 an hour.
To say that someone is “not worth £6 an hour” was clumsy and open to wilful misunderstanding. My wife was capable of earning her pay as an experienced nurse until the sadistic criminals of IRA/Sinn Fein crippled her. She is worth no less today, but she could not justify a pay rate of £6 an hour.
Beggars belief
I’m very concerned that a number of commentators in the media have taken this approach of saying that Freud had a point, even if he expressed it crassly. I’ve also heard it said that you need to put his words into context. The context of his statement was that a Tory councillor David Scott, from Tunbridge Wells said:
“The other area I’m really concerned about is obviously the disabled. I have a number of mentally damaged individuals, who to be quite frank aren’t worth the Minimum Wage, but want to work.
What this reveals is someone who uses a very pejorative phrase to describe people with (presumably) mental health problems or learning difficulties, who expressly thinks these people are not “worth” the minimum wage, and as Peter notes, who has clearly not done any research on the support there is already available to people in this position.
Further, Freud’s agreement with this position and the extrapolation that we need to find ways to treat disabled people as more widely not deserving of the right to the National Minimum Wage is quite disgraceful in my opinion. To then claim that it is the NMW which is a significant contributor to the rates of unemployment amongst disabled people is disingenuous to say the least. For example, note this statement from Disability facts and figures:
According to the Labour Force Survey, disabled people are now more likely to be employed than they were in 2002, but disabled people remain significantly less likely to be in employment than non-disabled people. In 2012, 46.3% of working-age disabled people are in employment compared to 76.4% of working-age non-disabled people. There is therefore a 30.1 percentage point gap between disabled and non-disabled people, representing over 2 million people. The gap has reduced by 10 percentage points over the last 14 years and has remained stable over the last two years despite the economic climate
If the NMW is really having such a a negative impact, why have employment rates risen, given that it was introduced in 1999 and therefore covers the period in question? There are certainly broader arguments about the impacts of a NMW on employment rates, usually made by the CBI and their chums but this is always from the point of view of maximising profits and paying workers less from what I can see.
We’ve also heard about Denmark and others subsidising employers to take on disabled people for less than NMW (even though Denmark doesn’t actually have a NMW). In relation to this argument, maybe Freud should read his own department’s report What works for whom in helping disabled people into work? :
The evaluation of Flexijobs [Danish scheme] raised concerns about a potentially marginalising effect, with disabled people encouraged into low skilled work with low pay, mainly outside the normal legal framework of employment rights. It was also found that over time people were increasingly assigned to Flexijobs who would have got jobs anyway, potentially crowding out target participants (PHRC, 2009). This is confirmed by Høgelund and Pedersen (2002), who concluded that wage subsidy schemes could have negative side effects in terms of deadweight loss and stigmatisation, and did not always result in full integration of disabled employees in the workplace
I would suggest that direct disability discrimination is a, if not the, major factor, not helped by government spokespeople implying that disabled workers are less valuable and less productive than other employees, as well as ignorance of the availability of the Access to Work scheme and the assistance potentially available through social security and tax credits.
Further, rather than looking to lessen workers’ rights in such a way, surely if they were serious about improving employment rates for disabled people, they would look to strengthen employment rights specifically? Because one of the most common outcomes of developing an impairment whilst in employment is ultimately the loss of that employment. Let alone the fact that various studies have shown employers directly discriminating against disabled people in recruitment procedures. Why don’t they improve educational opportunities for disabled children because, for many , these mean that they leave school already behind their peers, yet here also the coalition has undermined rights.
To even entertain the notion that we should look to undermine basic principles regarding receiving fair reward for work is simply revealing what many of us already suspect, which is that politicians view poor working class people as simple economic units that deserve absolutely nothing but exploitation and contempt. They aren’t interested in improving employment rates really, they simply see another opportunity to further marginalise a group of people who have been hit hardest by their programme of austerity and who they’d like to drive into zero-hour contract “jobs” or unpaid “work experience” positions.
[ Edited: 20 Oct 2014 at 01:50 pm by Paul_Treloar_CPAG ]I agree. Freud summed up this attitude a couple of years ago when he referred to unemployed people as “stock”. Implying that they are little more than cattle to be exploited for the benefit of his over-privileged, self-serving mates in the city.