Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform (Disabled People)

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

There are times when we debate issues in this House with maturity and sensitivity, and I am pleased that, since the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) sat down, that has been the case today. No one could fail to have been moved by the examples given by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), or by the speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who is no longer in his place. The reality is that, if we want to make a difference, to fix the ills of our society and to make Britain the best it can be, we need to show more maturity in debating these issues.

Unemployment for people with disabilities exceeds 50%. Among those with severe learning disabilities, the figure is more than 90%. Many of those people want to work, and I would expect every Member to want to see those unemployment rates fall. When we tackle youth unemployment through apprenticeships, we concede that it is legitimate for employers to pay less than the minimum wage and for the Government to give support to employers, so why can we not consider doing that for people with disabilities? We owe it to them to think constructively about what more we can do to give employers a greater incentive to give people with disabilities a chance. The truth is that the minimum wage acts as a barrier to employment when an employer judges that the amount they have to pay exceeds the value being added by the employee. It is surely self-evident that we should try to identify what we can do to eliminate that barrier. I am not talking about people being worth less; I am talking about making practical interventions to fix a problem.

The fact is that we, as politicians, need to deal with the world as it is, not how we would like it to be. If we want to achieve the outcomes that we have been talking about today, we need to reflect the real world. We need to work with employers to see what more we can do to encourage them to be more ready to employ those with disabilities. Simply to sit on the sidelines and whip up hysteria about the minimum wage will quite simply fail those people. What is needed is a mature debate about what more we can do in this space.

Lord Freud is an honourable man who has done more to support people with disabilities than many of the members of rent-a-mob who have leapt on his words with synthetic anger. His only offence was one of sloppy language. Who in this House is always completely accurate in their use of language? Who in this House has never made a mistake? The way in which Labour Members have inflamed this row has shown them at their holier-than-thou worst. They like to pretend that my party is the “nasty party”. Well, I will tell them what is nasty. It is distorting the comments of a decent honourable man and using people with disabilities as a political football with which to beat the Government. Shame on them!

If there is a good thing to come out of this unhappy episode, it is that the public saw it for what it was: a shameless piece of political opportunism. We wonder why people are turning away from politics. This is a perfect example of why they are doing so. Politics should be about ideas and principles. Politicians should be about leadership, not about simply being weathervanes. Today’s politicians are too scared of saying anything that might be construed as politically incorrect, or of saying anything that could be taken out of context to write a headline. The result is that politics is becoming bland, managerial and utterly uninspiring. It is failing to deliver.

This is a perfect example of an issue that we should be debating in a more grown-up manner. If we do not talk about the world as it is in a mature way, there are others who will fill the gap. The fact is that the quiet majority of people out there are very reasonable. They are not stupid—far from it. Any politician who takes them for fools will pay the price. The public have judged that Lord Freud was well-intentioned. Labour Members can use their friends in the metropolitan media and the charities to try to score a political advantage, but they will be the ones who suffer next year at the ballot box.

Success in politics is not measured by how much of a hoo-hah we can generate on Twitter. It is measured by delivering on our policy objectives. Our objective is to give those with disabilities the opportunity to work if they want to, and no amount of political haranguing by the party opposite will stop us on this side of the House focusing on the real challenge. If Labour Members have not got anything constructive to say about this issue, frankly they should shut up.