Sometimes it’s just easier to bash a Tory than pause to think about a very difficult question.
The writer of the following article is the father of a disabled young woman, as I am, and he raises some of these very difficult questions. Like the writer, I, too, was perturbed at the line taken by the Leader of the Labour Party at Prime Minister’s Questions.
“When my daughter leaves school in two years' time, I will be delighted if Ed Miliband offers her a job. She could clear the plates from his table or wash up his breakfast things if he could spare half an hour to stand alongside her and help scrub the remnants of bacon sandwich she had missed. But if he could observe her briefly while not in prime minister's questions mode I am sure he would agree that there are few if any jobs she could do of sufficient commercial value to justify being paid the minimum wage.
“All of which makes me angry at the Labour leader's cheap shot at Lord Freud, trying to paint him as a heartless Tory ready to kick away the crutches of the disabled. It is clear from the transcript of the offending meeting at the Conservative party conference that the welfare reform minister and a Tunbridge Wells councillor were having a serious discussion about work opportunities for a group of people — those with severe mental health problems — who could not otherwise find employment. The councillor made the point that the minimum wage was unhelpful as it did not allow for the extra time and assistance that such employees need.
“No one, other than as an act of charity, is going to employ someone who takes eight hours to complete a task that most workers on the minimum wage could do in two.
“The issues are similar for people who, like my daughter, have learning disabilities. Only 6.4 per cent of such people have paid employment. Fortunately there are work opportunities for the others, but they exist only because the social enterprises that create them are allowed to operate outside the minimum wage.
“At half term my daughter will be on a work placement at a farm. Her rate will be £41 per day — that is not what the farm will pay her, it is what she will pay the farm, out of her "personal budget" provided by the county council. It is to pay for the carers required to help her to work.
“This is a perfectly legitimate debate: could the government broaden work opportunities for the learning-disabled by introducing exemptions from the minimum wage, or should employers always pay the minimum wage but receive tax relief if they take on the learning-disabled? It is not a debate we can have, however, so long as Ed Miliband is out to score easy political points by quoting people out of context.
This article was “The Thunderer” column last Friday, 17th October. At the risk of offending Rupert Murdoch, I have quoted the article in full, minus the headline. Otherwise, you can only read it if you take out a subscription to “The Times”
And the writer? “It's by this guy Ross Clark who is a right-wing journalist who earns his living writing for the vicious Daily Mail and the poisonous Daily Express gutter press” (note 1), so you can dismiss what he has to say if that’s easier.
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(1) Taken from an online ‘Community Review' of Ross Clark's 2009 book "The Road to Big Big Brother: One Man's Struggle Against the Surveillance Society".
