Lord Freud faces calls to resign over disabled wage comments

Tory minister Lord Freud is facing growing calls from politicians and campaigners to stand down over comments he made regarding disabled people and the minimum wage.

The welfare reform minister was recorded saying disabled people were "not worth" the full national minimum wage and that some workers with mental disabilities could be paid just £2 an hour.

The controversial comments were made at a fringe event at last month's Conservative Party conference and have caused huge public outcry since they were highlighted by Labour leader Ed Miliband yesterday, sparking calls for the peer's resignation.

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Freud has since apologised for his "foolish" remark. "To be clear, all disabled people should be paid at least the minimum wage, without exception, and I accept that it is offensive to suggest anything else," he said, according to The Guardian.

Miliband has said that Freud should step down, while Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg described the comments as "deeply distressing and offensive". For many, it was the word "worth" that touched a raw nerve, he said.

Mencap, the UK's leading charity for people with mental disabilities, has said that Freud appeared to be saying "that the work that disabled people do have less value than the rest of the population".

Some commentators argue that his view is representative of the Tory party as a whole. "The government has been producing enough measures that infer disabled people are slightly less than human," writes The Guardian's Frances Ryan."[Freud] has finally said it out loud."

However, David Cameron was quick to distance himself from Freud's comments, saying they were "not the views of anyone in government".

Some have defended Freud's message, saying that it was simply "clumsily" delivered. "Lord Freud sounds like he was raising an important debate, but has muddied the waters with what sounds like disrespectful language," says the BBC's Damon Rose.

The broadcaster's political editor Nick Robinson said Freud's comments should not be taken out of context and argues that Lord Freud was not arguing for a new policy of routinely paying people less than the minimum wage.

The Spectator's Sam Bowman argues that Lord Freud's comments were "motivated by compassion" and that his comments, which were "broadly correct", had been used against him by Labour for "naked political gain".

This is not the first time Freud's comments on welfare and disability have caused controversy. The former City banker once said he didn't know why some families used food banks and that poorer people should take more risks, according to The Independent.