SEVEN Labour MPs have had the whip suspended for six months after voting against the Labour government on an amendment to scrap the two-child benefit cap.
Ex-shadow chancellor John McDonnell was among the Labour MPs who voted for an SNP motion calling for an end to the policy, which prevents almost all parents from claiming Universal Credit or child tax credit for more than two children.
McDonnell backed the SNP motion alongside Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Imran Hussain, Apsana Begum and Zarah Sultana.
MPs rejected the SNP amendment by 363 votes to 103, in the first major test of the new Labour government’s authority. The two-child cap was introduced by the Conservatives in 2017.
Losing the whip means the MPs are suspended from the parliamentary party and will now sit as independent MPs. Nearly all of the rebels were allies of the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who now sits as an independent MP and put his name to the SNP motion.
Sultana told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she had not been informed she would lose the whip if she voted for the amendment. However, she said this would not have changed her decision.
The MP for Coventry South rejected the argument there was not the money to fund scrapping the cap, saying measures such as a wealth tax could be introduced. ‘This is about political will,’ she added.
Burgon said he was ‘disappointed’ by the decision to suspend him, explaining that ‘many struggling families’ in his Leeds East constituency had raised the cap with him.
Begum said she had voted against the cap because it had ‘contributed to rising and deepening levels of child poverty and food insecurity for many East End families’.
Byrne, meanwhile, said the ‘best way’ to help his Liverpool West Derby constituents living in poverty was to scrap the cap.
Before the vote, McDonnell said: ‘I don’t like voting for other parties’ amendments, but I’m following Keir Starmer’s example as he said put country before party.’
However, Jonathan Ashworth, a key figure in the party’s election campaign, said voting for the amendment was ‘a futile gesture’. Ashworth unexpectedly lost his seat in the election to an independent pro-Gaza candidate, told the BBC: ‘The government is not unsympathetic to the cause.’
‘It has announced a child poverty review. The right way to effect change is not the parliamentary games of last night, but to engage with that review.’
The decision to remove the whip is an early show of force from the new government.
This is Labour’s first rebellion. It has sent Labour whips into a panic, sending of a message to MPs that dissent will not be tolerated in votes. However the majority of Labour MPs are opposed to the two-child benefit cap.
The vast majority of Labour Party members are demanding that the party makes a decision at once to scrap the cap.
The government response has been to say that it is not prepared to make ‘unfunded promises’ by abolishing the cap. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is on record as stating that there is ‘no silver bullet’ to end child poverty. Seven Labour MPs have now been suspended by the party for six months.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham have also backed calls for a change.
Said Burnham: ‘The evidence is plain, that it really does cause harm,’ to BBC Newsnight on Tuesday.
In the days ahead, the Labour government is going to be plunged into crisis as the Tories demand wage and job cutting, to try to resolve the developing economic catastrophe at the expense of workers.
The issue then will be the working class and the trade unions giving the Labour government no alternative but to nationalise the banks and the major industries to bring in a socialist planned economy, as the only way to deal with the capitalist crisis!
