The government has promised to make major concessions to its universal credit and personal independence payment bill after a large-scale and very public rebellion by Labour MPs threatened to derail a vote due on July 1.
The Commons order paper published on June 26 revealed that 126 Labour MPs had signed an amendment opposing a second reading for the bill, which proposes restricting disability benefits to levels they find unacceptable. Cleverly, the amendment stated that they accept “the need for the reform of the social security system” but they then listed a plethora of reasons as to why they declined to give the bill a second reading when it is due for a vote on July 1.
Many of these reasons related to the government’s own assessment of the impact of the bill. It openly admits, for example, that an estimated 250,000 people, including 50,000 children, would be pushed into poverty by the changes being made to the social security system.
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Faced with the possibility of losing a vote to his own MP in the week marking the first anniversary of his arrival in Downing Street, prime minister Keir Starmer is promising to make concessions. These reportedly include exempting people currently receiving disability benefits from the changes.
But whether or not this is enough to stop the rebellion, significant damage has been done. Securing the second reading on half-promised and lukewarm concessions that cannot be sustained simply stores up future strife.
Collision course
How did the government reach a position where it was at risk of losing a vote on one of its key bills in the week in which it celebrates a year in office? Why has it been pushing a bill so obviously lacking in support among its own MPs? Why has no-one rolled with the political pitch and controlled the narrative?
This is not a muscle flexing exercise of the kind seen in December 1997, when Labour sought to show how tough it could be by cutting benefits for lone parents. It is not a macho attempt to see off a resurgent left flank, because effectively there isn’t one. The troublesome hard left is now tiny. Nor is it a putative rebellion that can be dismissed as dominated by the usual suspects. It is a rebellion of the mainstream core of the backbench parliamentary Labour party (PLP). Among the 126 MPs openly speaking out against the bill, 11 are Labour select committee chairs and 62 of them were only elected last year. In short, these are not the usual suspects. Their complaints cannot be readily dismissed.
There were allegedly noises off from some whips suggesting this might be a confidence issue – implying that the government could be in trouble so pressure is being piled on rebels to withdraw or risk bringing down the government. I was a government whip from 1999 to 2002, and I can attest that no whip should be running around declaring this a potential “confidence vote”. And no MP should believe that it is. It is not. Were there to be any truth in these rumours then it indicates a whips’ office either vastly inexperienced, overconfident and arrogant, or simply grossly incompetent and panicked. Both the chief whip and the No.10 political operation will come under intense scrutiny whatever happens now. How did they not see this coming?
The truth is that the only serious option at this point should be to bury the bill. It should be pulled before the vote and resurrected in the context of developing an anti-poverty strategy, including a child poverty alleviation plan. It might be that a sufficient number of “rebel signatories” are persuaded to let the second reading happen with a promise of further changes building on the concessions already announced, but this does not mean a safe passage later in the process. Many of the signatories will have already been disheartened and worried by the scrapping of the winter fuel allowance and the continuation of two-child benefit limit. They may have acquiesced on the latter and pocketed the change in policy on the former, but their disquiet and anger has not gone away.
The government should never have been in a position of seriously considering pushing the bill through hoping it will secure Conservative support for its second reading. To do so would seriously threaten if not Starmer’s position, then certainly the position of the work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall – and even perhaps that of the chancellor, Rachel Reeves. All three will still emerge from this week damaged in some fashion.
Rebellions such as this can take on a dynamic and life of their own and are likely to grow rather than diminish. Some 106 Labour MPs signed the amendment initially – only to be joined by more in short order. Backbenchers will have been worried about being asked “what did you do in the war?” by their grassroots members had they not enlisted their support.
There is also a danger that once blooded by rebellion, some of the 120 plus MPs will get a taste for it – and that spells a real danger for the government, even one with a majority of 165.
Either way, the government, which was relying on the bill to make £5bn worth of savings that would supposedly obviate the need for tax rises in the autumn, is going to have to somehow salvage both its economic and its political strategy in the wake of this crisis – and start to take its backbenchers more seriously.
It’s not how anyone would have wanted to mark a year in office. Happy birthday, one and all.
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Tony McNulty is member of the Labour Party
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
