LABOUR mayors must boldly face up to the problems before them if they are to honour their promises to disabled people, TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said yesterday.

Opening the trade union centre’s disabled workers’ conference in London, she rallied delegates to “fight the politics of hate” and warned that disabled benefits claimants had been smeared as scroungers and that scapegoated migrant workers were being used for little pay.

“What a victory it was when, in the face of such a dirty and racist campaign, last week London voted to put a Labour mayor in power in City Hall,” Ms O’Grady said, “a victory that, along with the new Labour mayors in Bristol, Salford and Liverpool too, gives us new opportunities to make lives better for disabled people.”