Portillo signed away jobs scheme
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.MICHAEL PORTILLO personally approved the European directive that axed the jobs support scheme for the disabled which he now says he would have preferred to keep, it emerged yesterday.
The news was greeted with glee by Labour who said it made the Secretary of State for Employment either 'a knave or a fool'.
But Mr Portillo said he had not been told by the Department of Employment that the 'priority suppliers scheme' would be hit before he signed an explanatory memorandum for the directive when he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury in October 1992. Nor had it been raised before the directive was approved in 1993. Because his new department admitted it still did not know why the impact on the scheme had not been raised when the directive was being negotiated, Mr Portillo was careful to blame neither David Hunt nor Gillian Shepherd, his predecessors as employment secretary, for the bungle.
Asked if he thought the issue should have been raised, he told the Independent: 'You are trying to make me substitute a judgement that I might have made two years ago if I had been in a different position.' There might have been good reasons for not raising the issue, he said, but the fact was that it had not been raised.
Earlier in the day Mr Portillo said he could not ignore the directive because it was now law. Labour MPs saw that as an attempt to blame his predecessors for what has become an embarrassing dispute with disabled people and Brussels.
Sir Edward Heath, the former prime minister, told BBC's Newsnight last night that if Mr Portillo signed the directive, 'he takes the responsibility'. The Employment Secretary was 'playing politics', trying to show Brussels was 'inhuman and does not consider the disabled, and therefore we ought not to stay in the community'.
Tony Lloyd, Labour's training spokesman, said Mr Portillo's disclosure that he signed the memorandum meant 'he is either a knave or a fool. He either signed it deliberately knowing what was going to happen, or he signed not knowing what was going to happen.'
Andrew Marr, page 17
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments