Pat McFadden has urged his Labour colleagues to show “solidarity” with the Chancellor as she considers her Budget decisions, including on the two-child benefit cap.
The Work and Pensions Secretary said Rachel Reeves “shouldn’t do the job alone” as he called for “collective responsibility” from all Government ministers.
Pressed on the amount it would cost to scrap the two-child limit, Mr McFadden said the Government is “ambitious about reducing child poverty”.
“Obviously, we look at the impact and effect of different measures, but I do think that the whole Government owns all the Government’s fiscal decisions,” he told a fringe event at the Labour Party conference.
Speaking at the Politico Pub, Mr McFadden said: “I don’t think it’s right, really, for individual MPs or ministers to say ‘I’d love to spend X billions on that’, and then when asked how’s it going to be funded, to say, ‘Well, that’s a matter for the Chancellor’.
“It’s a matter for all of us. There is collective responsibility there for a reason, and the Chancellor is the person who has the very difficult job of looking at all the different demands, all the different revenue resources.
“But she shouldn’t do that job alone, it needs to be owned by all of us, and I think we owe her a bit of solidarity in the decisions that she’s going to make.”
He also argued that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer “deserves far more credit than he’s getting for winning that trust”.
The veteran Labour MP said he would “make no apology for us recognising that the terrain has changed”, when pressed on the focus being placed on Reform UK at the conference.
Mr McFadden said: “I think it’s important to show an awareness that the terrain is changing.
“So I make no apology for us recognising that the terrain has changed, and that’s why we’ll talk about that party and some of the mistakes they’ve made.
“And I think they’ve made a couple of big ones recently.”
