Ed Miliband really did have the best of prime minister’s questions today. He had David Cameron bang to rights – or rather disability rights. Though the unemployment figures are down below 2,000,000 today, Cameron found himself fighting on Labour’s territory and having to suffer Miliband’s accusation that the Tories were still the ‘nasty party’.
It was David Freud, at the Conservative party conference, who gave Miliband the ammunition. He is the junior minister for welfare reform who has brought in the bedroom tax. A millionaire, and near neighbour of Miliband’s – though living further up the hill – he is one of the most privileged members of the Tory party. Anyway, Labour sources alleged that he had said that there was a group of people, disabled people, who were not worth the full minimum wage.
Miliband asked what Cameron had to say about this. All Cameron could do was repeat was that it was not government policy. Miliband went on to quote further damning stuff from David Freud. Freud said, according to Miliband, that he was ‘looking at whether there is something we can do if someone wants to work for £2 an hour.’
Cameron was halfway through a bland answer, with the House of Commons in uproar, and he finally shouted, red in the face: ‘I don’t want lectures from anyone about looking after disabled people.’
The attack from Miliband had worked: it showed how horrible elements of the Tory party really are and forced Cameron to defend the minimum wage. Miliband occupied the disabled agenda, which Cameron has always sought to occupy because of his own disabled son. And he poked the Liberal Democrats who are more inclined to strengthening minimum wage legislation than the Tories.
Miliband also reminded us that lots of people who are in employment are not able to live because people on the minimum wage and zero-hour contracts do not get paid enough. ‘The latest figures show wages still fail to keep pace with inflation and he is presiding over the longest fall in living standards for a century,’ he said.
The other striking fact that Miliband pulled out of the hat was that a family with one earner and two children on £25,000 will lose £500 a year because of planned cuts to tax credits. Cameron had no answer to this, and talked just about raising the tax threshold.
These will be the arguments that will rage in the months coming up to the election. And it was interesting how, when Cameron had no answers to questions, he just wielded a club with caveman-like subtlety, repeating over and over how the biggest danger to Britain and the economy was Labour. If Cameron does well in 2015 it will be through sheer brute force and fear.
The other territory to which Labour was laying claim today was the NHS – both the long waits for GP appointments and the privatisation of local services.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) asked if the prime minister would ‘acknowledge that it’s harder to be a GP and see a GP on his watch’. Graham Jones (Hyndburn) told us the situation was so dire that police were taking ill people to hospital in police cars in his constituency. Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) said in South Tyneside there were 30,000 extra visits to accident and emergency because of the closure of a walk-in centre in Jarrow. Steve Reed (Croydon North) said £11.5 million had been spent in south London restructuring the health service that could have been better spend on GPs. We also learnt from Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) that in Staffordshire there is to be a £1.2 billion privatisation of cancer care.
In other questions Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) pleaded for a national honour for the murdered hostage Alan Henning and recognition for his family. ‘In Eccles we have lost a local hero,’ she said. This was the only moment that Cameron softened.
It will be a war of attrition. Labour is going to have to show that out-of-touchness and nastiness makes the Tories not fit for government. Meanwhile the Tories will defend their plans with all the nastiness and brutality they can muster.
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Sally Gimson is a journalist and Labour councillor in the London borough of Camden. She tweets @SallyGimson
It is clear to me that neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Freud are worth paying the minimum wage to . I would not employ them because they are both inept . Mr Cameron also appears to be a very dishonest person and I would be concerned that he might steal from other workers . He says he knows about coping with disability . He knows nothing much at all about it because he is a millionaire due to inherited wealth . His disabled son wanted for nothing materially in his life . I struggled with my two youngest children severely disabled and their mother with disability and very dangerous and severe heart problems . Then I got severely injured by a vehicle hitting me .I was in incredible pain day and night for years and not able to put a sentence together or walk more than 5 yards somedays or 50 yards on a good day but did not qualify for disability allowance according to my doctor . But even I do not understand how tough it is for my 2 youngest children and other disabled people . So David Cameron is very clearly a dishonest liar .Perhaps though he has a disability that means he cannot sympathise or empathise with anyone not as well off as himself .
Either way I could not employ a man like that .
Lord Freud was not in the House of Lords yesterday, although he was due to answer routine Ministerial Questions. He was not been on radio or television all day, either. The absolute proof that he is unfit to be a Minister is that he is unable to account for himself.
The Freuds were once described to me as “a bunch of no-talents with a famous ancestor”. But the late Sir Clement’s appearances on Just a Minute were the exception that proved that rule. Lord Freud is only doing an institutionalised, officially-a-Minister version of the job that he was first given by Tony Blair. And he was like this then.
His views were “not those of anyone in Government,” said David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions. But at that moment, they were the views of the Under Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. He is still in his job, for no other reason that that Cameron is too weak to sack him. Or that he agrees with him. Or both.
Still, two pounds per hour, eh? This cripple is pleased to accept Lord Freud’s offer of an extra 80, 100, sometimes 120 quid a week. That would indeed help my self-esteem.
The ‘call me Dave’ facade momentarily slipped. To crack the Tory facade of ‘we actually care’ Labour needs to go for the jugular – as Tories have planned for Labour. Fight fire with fire.
Freud’s was a bad, private slip – he should go. However, Politicians in Glass Houses shouldn’t throw stones. Fair Play is Labour’s by-word – if Tories heed Ozzie advisers’ dirty-tricks-tactics to ‘win’ it will be pyhrric and backfire – UK Voters are not as Asses.
perhaps a check on Lord Freud and his help re welfare to work.brought in by prime minister tony blair in 2006.
he was rehired in 2008 by labour again.secretary of state of work and pensions.james purnell.
the undercover recording reminds me of mitt romney during the last presidential campaign.
so the nasty tactics now land in the uk.great.Not!