PMQs verdict: No apology is good enough. Freud must go, and he must go today

PMQs returns, and the Labour Party had an ambush waiting for Cameron. A recording from Lord Freud – the despicable welfare minister – saying that disabled people don’t deserve the full minimum wage (and suggesting that they might be paid £2 an hour) dropped only moments before PMQs. Ed Miliband – throat scratching as he delivered his lines without the aid of his voice – croaked as he spoke to the Commons. Yet the strained voice, painful as it sounded, actually seemed to suit him in a strange way.

Yet the Labour leader didn’t drop the hammer blow on Cameron immediately, despite the lobby waiting with baited breath in the gallery for the attack they new was coming. Miliband knew he had their attention, so a bit of showmanship was in order. It didn’t take long for Cameron to walk directly into a pre-prepared trap, mocking Miliband for the missing paragraphs from his conference speech. Miliband’s retort?:

“I lost a few paragraphs from my speech…you’ve lost a couple of members of Parliament”.

Zing.

And then came the Freud revelations.

The Labour Party must of course tread carefully when it comes to Freud, the architect (lest we forget) of the Bedroom Tax. After all it was as a Labour adviser that he was launched into the welfare debate nearly a decade ago (one of the more shameful episodes of our time in office), before becoming a Tory peer and a welfare minister.

But these comments, suggesting that the disabled might not be worth the minimum wage and might be paid £2 an hour, were pretty low even by his floor-scraping standards.

Cameron looked flustered, failed to answer any of Miliband’s questions and claimed that these were not the views of the government or anyone in the government. But that’s a lie, because Lord Freud is a minister in Cameron’s government. If they’re his views – which they are – then they’re the views of someone in his government.

All in all, the ambush meant that what could have been a tough day for Miliband (with a concerned party behind him and facing a Tory party jubilant at a fall in unemployment) became a victory for the Labour leader. Following his performance at the PLP on Monday (strong, by all accounts) his MPs may be a little happier than they were at the weekend, despite the structural problems that remain.

And what of Lord Freud? He apologised in an attempt to save his job this afternoon, but that should make no difference. This wasn’t an unguarded comment or a mis-speak. This was a minister saying what he actually thought policy should be, in public. He thinks that the minimum wage can be undercut (meaning it’s no longer “minimum” at all). He thinks disabled people could and should be paid less than other workers. Perhaps he also thinks that the disabled should be poorer than everyone else – as he is keen to cut disabled benefits and get disabled people back to work, that seems a logical conclusion to be drawn from his statements.

If Lord Freud’s comments on his own policy area don’t represent the views of the government he’s a member of, then he should resign or be sacked. Mealy-mouthed apologies after the fact won’t cut it. And if he’s still a minister tomorrow, we’ll know that despite Cameron’s protestations, slashing disabled people’s wages and undercutting the minimum wage is something his government actually stands for.