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Minister refuses to rule out whip being withdrawn from Labour MPs who rebel over welfare bill
Jacqui Smith, the skills minister, was on the morning interview round this morning and she refused to rule out Labour MPs losing the whip if they vote against the government. Asked on Times Radio if this could happen, she replied:
I think what’s important and from – as you say – from my experience as a former chief whip, is to keep talking, keep explaining the moves that the government has already made to recognise some of the concerns.
And asked the same question on Sky News, she replied:
I don’t think talking about punishments, even as a former chief whip, is the constructive way forward here.
In normal circumstances governing parties almost never remove the whip from MPs just for voting against No 10 on legislation, unless something has been designated a confidence vote. But this government defied convention last summer when it suspended seven leftwing Labour MPs who voted in favour of an SNP amendment to the king’s speech saying the two-child benefit cap should be abolished (at the time No 10 argued, because the king’s speech sets out the government’s entire programme, a draconican sanction was justified), and that is why there are concerns rebels could face suspension over the welfare vote.
Given the size of the possible rebellion tomorrow, suspending all Labour MPs who vote against the government seems unlikely. If 50 Labour MPs were to rebel, as some backbenchers predict, and they were all to face suspension, Starmer’s working majority would shrink from 165 to just 65.
But some in government are said to favour a hardline approach to discipline over this issue. Here is an extract from Caroline Wheeler and Gabriel Pogrund’s long read on this in the Sunday Times yesterday.
[Calls for a new approach by No 10 are] only likely to grow louder this weekend after claims — since debunked — that [Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff] planned to stave off the rebellion by suspending 10 Labour rebels every hour until 50 had been reached. At which point McSweeney was said to have insisted the insurrection would be over.
It is understood that McSweeney, who denies the specifics of the allegation, was told that the scale of the rebellion was such that the usual sanctions — removing the whip — would have little or no impact.
Kendall steps up efforts to win over Labour welfare rebels, as Burnham tells MPs to vote against ‘unfair’ bill
Good morning. Last week, on their Political Currency podcast, Ed Balls and George Osborne were talking about the Labour rebellion over the legislation to cut disability benefits – the universal credit (UC) and personal independence payment (Pip) bill – and Osborne asked for an example of an MP who would never normally rebel against the government because they were inherently mainstream and loyal, but who was opposed to this plan. Balls menioned Clive Efford, the veteran MP for Eltham and Chiselhurst. They were speaking on Thursday, before the government announced massive concessions to the bill worth £3bn a year.
Those concessions have won over some Labour MPs who were going to vote against the bill tomorrow, and Keir Starmer, instead of facing certain defeat, now seems likely to win the vote – although with a much reduced majority. But many moderates are still opposed and this morning one of them was on the Today programme. It was Clive Efford.
He told the programme that he was still not in a position to support the bill because the government has not yet published the full assessment of how people will be affected, and whether (as ministers claim) the cuts won’t lead to more poverty because people will get jobs instead. He said:
There are still £3.5 billion-worth of savings that are required in these measures and we don’t yet know the poverty impact that they will have. The original motion [the reasoned amendment to kill the bill, signed by Efford and more than 120 other Labour MPs] was asking for more time for us to understand the impact of these changes and that still applies to those people who will be adversely affected.
I think there are a lot of people waiting to hear what the government is saying today who may be inclined to accept what the government has done. For me the situation hasn’t changed for those people who will be adversely affected and until we know and understand the impact on them, we shouldn’t be taking what I think is a leap in the dark.
There are choices that the government can make here; there are other places it can go to identify the resources. What we want to see, and fully support, is measures the government is putting in the palace to assist people to move into work, the right to try, we support, but we can’t guarantee the savings.
When you’re asking for £3.5bn regardless of the impact of those changes that can only adversely affect people who are in the benefit system.
We cannot make assumptions about how much we can save in the welfare system ahead of actually bringing in those changes and seeing how they work.
As Pippa Crerar and Rowena Mason report in their overnight story, Efford is far from alone; Vicky Foxcroft, who resigned as a government whip over the cuts, has not been won over by the concessions.
Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, is expected to make a Commons statement today giving more details of the concessions. The Department for Work and Pensions issued some details overnight.
At the weekend the continuity rebels won the backing of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester. Burnham, who has become increasingly vocal in recent weeks in setting out an alternative, more muscular, soft left alternative to what Keir Starmer is offering, was at Glastonbury where he urged Labour MPs to vote down the bill. As Huffpost UK reports, he said:
What’s been announced is half a U-turn, a 50% U-turn. In my view I’d still hope MPs vote against the whole bill when it comes before parliament …
[Labour MPs] face the prospect, if they accept this package, someone could come to their surgery in two years saying ‘why did you vote to make me £6,000 worse off than someone exactly the same, but who was protected because they were an existing claimant’?
I hope they think carefully before the vote, because the vote will create that unfairness and divide in disabled people.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.30am: The high court will deliver its judgment on a legal challenge to the government’s policy on arms exports to Israel brought by human rights groups.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: John Healey, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, is expected to make a statement to MPs about the government concessions on the UC and Pip bill.
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