When a Freudian Slip isn’t just a Freudian Slip.

“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” — Lord Freud

Lord Freud’s comments today have been variously explained as “the same old Tories”, “a slip of the tongue”, “clumsy”, “thinking out loud” and a failure to “reject the premise of the question”.

Plenty of excuses — but no explanations.

In his ‘apology’, Lord Freud suggests not rejecting the premise of the question was his mistake. This is to miss the point.

It’s the “worth” part that is troubling. The Adam Smith Institute was running around all day trying (and failing in my view) to make an academic argument out of it, saying in other countries the wages of people with disabilities are topped up from government funds so a fair level of payment is made. Alarm bells should be ringing at that endorsement.

‘Topping up’ a wage shows they already know the amount being paid (Freud suggests as little as £2 an hour might suffice) is wrong. It shows they have decided the quality of work from someone with a disability cannot be sufficiently good, important, innovative, interesting or deserving to be regarded as equal to the work of someone without a disability.

The Adam Smith Institute’s argument, that the “market value some people’s wages is below the minimum wage” furthers this point.

What hope does that give to the many thousands of people who have a disability and who are currently unemployed? It sends a signal that even if they are successful in getting employment, it won’t be meaningful employment and they won’t be contributing as much as the person next to them. It says “you’re worth less than us, and soon we’ll pay you less to prove it”.

Freud’s comments are frankly the chilling reality of what this government thinks of people. This is the government that thinks people can’t be trusted with their welfare entitlements so they’ll provide pre-paid cards to ensure money is only spent on what Whitehall deems acceptable. The Minister who says he doesn’t have to be “the corpse at a funeral” to understand what’s going on.

Truly defining ‘worth’ in relation to an individual person is impossible. Is it a numbers game? — how many books can you bind, how much shopping can you scan through, how many cars can you test drive? Or is it about added value? — how creatively can you solve this problem, leadership, teamwork? In any of these scenarios, the value placed (in market terms at least) is defined as the maximum amount someone else is willing to pay for that output. So underlying Freud’s comments is the assumption that people with a disability are unable to produce goods or services to a comparable standard than their colleagues.

My final comment is the laughable suggestion that Lord Freud “knows exactly” who these people are. Heaven help him if he ever had to justify his own CV to a Job Centre Plus for the role he holds in Government — he has zero experience in his portfolio (unless you count banking as relevant — they were sort of part of a government welfare scheme).

If Lord Freud did know people with disabilities he would know that no two people are the same. Just as no two people you walk past in the street are the same, not all people with disabilities can be lumped into some category of ‘worth less than others’. How will we decide who gets paid this special £2 minimum wage? Or will it be a graded scheme — ‘quadriplegics £2 an hour, paraplegics £3 an hour… erm… how about £4 an hour for all the rest? And a special rate if you’re both a paraplegic and visually impaired.

I’m not making light of it.

Think about it for a minute and you’ll be disgusted by the very notion.

People with disabilities aren’t disabled people. They aren’t born disabled. Disability is a creation of the society we live in. Society chooses to label these people, hold them back, stigmatise them and treat them as less than who they are.

Imagine everyone in this world is born equal. Take Rawls’ veil of ignorance in a new direction (there is actually an excellent paper on this topic) — we don’t know what people will grow up to be, we don’t know what they can accomplish and we don’t know what impact they will have on the world around them. Now design a fair minimum wage for that society. Design a system where everyone is supported as much or as little as they require so they can get the best start in life and so they can get a helping hand whenever they need it.

Robert Hensel (who holds an amazing Guinness World Record for the world’s longest non-stop wheelie!) once said:

“I choose not to place “DIS”, in my ability.”

I suggest Lord Freud remembers the ability in us all to work a fair days work for a fair days wage.