Lord Freud, in a meeting at the recent Tory Conference
stated that disabled people are ‘not worth’ the minimum wage. Even though, his statement doesn’t consider
the various degrees of disabilities and how often disabled people can do the
same job, or better, than those without disabilities. If we consider such comments, we need to ask the
question if Lord Freud is considering that people such as Albert Einstein,
Stephan Hawking, Helen Keller, David Blunkett, Franklin D Roosevelt and many
others, have proved that a disability does not distinguish a person’s
worth. Does Lord Freud believe that
these people, who have made such amazing achievements, do not deserve to be
paid the same wages as their colleagues?
This is just another bigoted Tory
attack that has backfired on the Conservatives, but this is also not the first
time that such an attack has been made on the disabled by the Tories.
In 2011 the Conservative MP for Shipley, Phillip Davies,
made comments in a Commons debate that disabled people should be made to work
for less. Davies stated that ‘‘people
with a learning disability clearly, by definition, cannot be as productive in
their work.’’[1]
Once again we are brought into a backward driving debate on whether people with
disabilities should be paid less for doing the same job. Obviously, employers will be more attracted
to hiring someone to do a job for slave wages.
We call ourselves an inclusive society, but we discuss whether we should
pay people poverty wages because they are at a disadvantage. If we need to debate wages, surely the debate
should be based on the wages of those who create such idiotic comments, these
are the people in society that are not worth the wages we pay them. We need to ask the question whether MPs’, not
the disabled, are worth the minimum wage. Olde John Bull
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