The Tory message to disabled people: you’re just not worth it

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/15/tory-message-disabled-lord-freud-minimum-wage

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I promise that what you’re about to read is true. I have not orchestrated a far-fetched parody of Tory attitudes on disability and poverty. A Conservative minister – a welfare minister, no less – has actually been recorded saying that disabled people are “not worth” the full national minimum wage. It’s unclear how much less Lord Freud would like to pay disabled people: £4.50 less per hour is his first offer. Perhaps he would like to do away with cash altogether, giving blind people dog toys in exchange for a day’s work and wheelchair users shiny coins.

Recorded responding to a question from a Conservative councillor at a fringe event at the recent Tory conference, Freud said: “You make a really good point about the disabled. Now I had not thought through, and we have not got a system for, you know, kind of going below the minimum wage ... I know exactly what you mean, where actually as you say they’re not worth the full wage and actually I’m going to go and think about that particular issue ... whether there is something we can do nationally ... which if someone wants to work for £2 an hour ...”

Part of me thought I’d become immune to this government – to both its attitude and actions towards disabled people. I’ve spoken to enough people, ill, in pain and afraid, who – due to the immorality or incompetence of the Department for Work and Pensions – have been rejected for disability benefits and don’t know where money for food is going to come from. I’ve met enough people who are seeing their social care cut and their independence sold off, who no longer have the support to get dressed, leave the house or go to the toilet when they want. I’ve read eviction letters when the bedroom tax has pushed carers and disabled children out of their home.

There is something about reading a government minister say you are not worth the same wage as the rest of society that goes beyond everything else. That collides with four years of taking and hurting and shaming disabled people and puts it into words. “You are disabled and that means you are not worth as much as other people.”

It’s as if they are building an underclass. A few million cheap labourers, more cogs than people. It is really something to hear the people meant to represent you articulate the belief that you are not as good as others, that you are not of value. Disabled? Different? Less citizen, more fair game to be exploited.

This news does not come in isolation. We are in the climate of the Work Programme and employment and support allowance travesties, in jobseeker’s allowance sanctions and personal independent payment delays. Coerced, free labour and a shrinking, ever conditional benefit system. Freud has not spoken out of turn, but encapsulated Conservative attitudes to both disabled people and workers: pay them as little as possible and they will be grateful for it.

The Tories are not content with forcing disabled people into work. They want to pay them a pittance when they get there. I suppose we can thank Freud. The government has been producing enough measures that infers disabled people are slightly less than human. He’s finally said it out loud.