Never mind who Rosa Monkton is, it will always be wrong to pay disabled people less
Excellent article from Jim Moore. Here’s the gist:
Rosa Monckton, whose daughter has Down’s Syndrome, points to an inconvenient truth as the basis for her case. There are 1.4 million people with learning disabilities in the UK. Some 1.3 million of them are unemployed.
“Pay is the thorny issue,” she says, when it comes to getting them into employment, and she goes on to bemoan a rare bright spot in the unlovely legacy of Chancellor George Osborne: the fact that the minimum wage is rising.
She seems to be suggesting that an unemployment rate of greater than 90 per cent is going to magically tumble simply by paying people in that group a bit less than their peers.
Her argument comes crashing down when you realise that it was running at that sort of level prior to Osborne’s progressive decision to raise the minimum wage.
Monckton rightly recognises the chronic lack of support available to people with learning disabilities when they leave college. But she grants the Government and its ministers a pass when it comes to doing anything about that.
She talks about the dignity of work, and the beneficial effect it has on the people her charity helps. Part of that dignity comes from the dignity of being paid at the end of the day.
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Rosamond Mary Lawson is in fundamental error, I believe. I cannot distinguish between her proposed two-tier pay scheme, Philip Davies’ proposed two tier citizenship and the thinking behind what was later designated Aktion T4, the scheme for involuntary euthanasia in 1939 Germany.
So far as disability and employment are concerned, we need to ensure that those afflicted with brain damage amounting to a set percentage do not qualify to stand for election to our parliament, amongst other reforms to the legislature. This will likely do more good for those with Down syndrome and other problems at the lower end of society.