Lord Freud And The Minimum Wage For Disabled People

[sp1814]

During a meeting at the Conservative conference last month, Lord Freud told a Tory councillor: 'You make a really good point about the disabled. There is a group where actually as you say they are not worth the full minimum wage.'

He also went on to say that there are people who want to work for under £2 and provision should be made to enable this.

I suspect that people actually don't want to undercut the minimum wage if at all possible.

And it's more than a little curious to identify the disabled as being those who deserve less than the minimum wage in any case. If you're able to do the job, then surely you should be paid the wage for that job.

Or am I being naive?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29628557

[sandyRoe]

There was Sigmund, Clement, and Lucian, all remarkable in their own way. Is this Freud the fool of the family?

[Svejk]

Think you'll find the story has moved on, Sandy. They actually booed the labour woman on QT tonight. Half an hour later Abbott says out loud what a lot of us thought anyway. This could scupper any chance Labour had in the General Election.

[ABerrant]

"Four and a half years on, and still blaming the last government for this one's blunders. Nothing changes."

Some things must have changed in the last eleven and a half years though because there were no calls for Patricia Hewitt to resign in 2003 when, as [New Labour] Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the DTI (in conjunction with DWP and in consultation with bodies such as Mencap and Scope) issued guidance that people with mental health issues or learning difficulties be allowed to engage in 'therapeutic work' for £4 per DAY when the National Minimum Wage (Adult Rate) was £4.20 per hour.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20070603164510/http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file11883.pdf

[Hypognosis]

It would be fascinating to learn where the line was drawn (at that time) between "therapeutic" and "productive".

Not to put too fine a point of it but was anyone, in the background, coining it from having their workers on only £4/day, each?

19th century mill-owners must be spinning in their graves that they never thought of this first.