THE UNITED KINGDOM’S welfare minister is facing calls to resign after a recording emerged in which he said that some disabled people are “not worth” paying the minimum wage.
Lord David Freud has apologised for the remarks, and said he is ‘profoundly sorry for any offence caused to disabled people’.
Labour leader Ed Miliband raised the comments during Prime Ministers Questions this morning, and called for Freud’s resignation.
“Surely someone holding those views can’t possible stay in this government?” Miliband said.
Prime Minister David Cameron distanced himself from the remarks, and stressed that they are “not the views of this government, not the views of anyone in the government”.
“The minimum wage is paid to everybody, disabled people included,” the Tory leader said.
In the recording, recorded by a Conservative councillor who reportedly questioned Frued on how some ‘mentally damaged individuals, who to be quite frank aren’t worth the minimum wage, want to work’, the welfare minister said:
Now, there is a small… there is a group, and I know exactly who 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, and without distorting the whole thing, which actually if someone wants to work for £2 an hour, and it’s working can we actually …
Freud, great grandson of Sigmund Freud, offered “a full and unreserved apology”.
“I was foolish to accept the premise of the question. To be clear, all disabled people should be paid at least the minimum wage, without exception, and I accept that it is offensive to suggest anything else.”
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