Following publication of his controversial writings suggesting that some disabled people should be paid less than the minimum wage, calls have been made asking him to resign.
The Chief Executive of Disability Rights UK has said, “I am totally opposed to any suggestion regarding the minimum wage. It would set us on the slippery to sheltered employment and performing menial tasks at day centres.”
Three years ago, Tory Minister, Lord Freud, faced calls to be sacked after he was recorded making the same suggestion at a fringe event at the Conservative party conference. Ian Jones, co-founder of the ‘WOWCampaign’, said Field’s ‘offensive’ suggestion ‘reinforces a discriminatory and prejudicial stereotype that disabled people are worth less than others.”
He went on to add, “If Frank Field wants to close the disability employment gap, the ‘WOWCampaign’ suggest that he starts by putting together a robust plan to tackle the prejudice and discrimination that disabled people face from employers, which both starts as a barrier to them joining the workforce and stops them from achieving their true potential.”
In his essay, The Future Of Employment Support for The Disabled, Field says that, “more thinking is required if this Government wants to reduce the disability employment gap.” He adds, ” “The introduction of the NLW cuts even further adrift from the labour market those individuals whose work has an economic value below the legal minimum wage.”