Transcript of Jonathan Dimbleby
Programme
The following is a transcript of a portion of the Jonathan Dimbleby
programme on ITV at 11am on 1st May 2005, relating to employment by
disabled people. You can listen to or watch the
programme in various formats too, if you want.
JD: Jonathan Dimbleby
(presenter)
SP: Stuart Paulley (my dad)
AM: Alan Millburn (Labour)
LF: Liam Fox (Tory)
MF: Matthew Taylor (Lib Dem)
- JD: The man wearing the glasses with the elegant
beard, just in the second row.
- SP: I'd like to represent a group that I don't think
have been mentioned at all, and that's the disabled. I have a disabled son
who would very much like to work but is caught in the poverty trap, I'm
sorry the benefits trap, and I've tried to get this message across to
ministers. I keep getting replies back. Why is it not possible for him to
earn money and so contribute to society, contribute to the economy?
- JD: Very important but brief all round, very quickly
please.
- AM: Well he should be able to and I mean one of the
great successes I think in recent years has been that we now have half of
disabled people who want to work able to work through the New Deal, which
has helped a lot of people, and through the tax credit regime, which has
provided more help for people and has provided a positive incentive for
people, precisesly the sort of things incidentally that both the
Conservative and the Liberals oppose. In terms of honesty on taxation
incidentally, it's fine saying that Matthew, but what you can't pretend is
that you can make a hundred spending commitments which is what the Liberal
Democrats have done during the course of the last parliament, and say that
is all going to be funded by a 50p rate increase for those earning
over...
- (unintelligible, all talking over each other)
- JD: Hang on, I think it is only fair to that
gentleman just briefly to respond to that very important point, it's on
disabled offspring and what's your solution to it.
- LF: Gordon Brown's tax and benefits system's far too
complex and it must be morally wrong that people should be able to be
better off not doing something than actually doing what they are capable
of doing and contributing to our society.
- SP: Precisely.
- LF: The benefits system is now an anti-enterprise
culture in the United Kingdom.
- JD: And Matthew Taylor on that:
-
MT: (indicating SP) Well I mean, in a way you
made my point for me. Because of the complexities of the system we've
got, because of the backdoor taxes, because of the council tax, people
are very often at the moment worse off working than they would be if they
weren't. And if you stick to systems that are based on ability to pay,
that can't happen, because you don't get these big taxes hitting in, of
which the worst is council tax, there's people on 11 or 12 thousand a
year being asked to pay (unintelligible) thousand per year, and
I'm afraid that's just not right, but it creates poverty traps, the
removal of countil tax benefits, the removal of free school meals -
things like that leave people worse off.
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