UK prime minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government was forced to capitulate to its own backbench rebels on Tuesday evening, by offering further last-minute concessions to stave off a damaging defeat in a vote due on cuts to disability benefits.
With barely an hour to go before what was set to be a knife-edge vote in the House of Commons, Stephen Timms, Britain’s welfare minister, announced that the government was prepared to give in on a key demand made by rebels.
He told the Commons the government would delay implementation of new, tightened eligibility criteria for claimants of personal independence payments (Pip), top-up cash payments paid to disabled people to cover costs associated with their disabilities.
The new criteria will now be delayed until a review of Pip that he leading is published.
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Following the concession to rebels, the government’s Bill passed the vote by 335 votes to 260. Meanwhile, House of Commons voting records show about 42 Labour MPs still chose to back a rebel amendment, which did not pass.
The Labour rebels had been angry that their party was seeking cuts to disability benefits. Many also complained that Downing Street wasn’t listening to their concerns.
One rebel who had spoken to The Irish Times about the direction of the administration said they just wanted their party to “govern like a Labour government”.
Several rebels on Tuesday argued with their own front bench all afternoon in the Commons chamber that it made no sense to tighten Pip criteria until Mr Timms’s review was complete.
“We have heard those concerns,” said Mr Timms as he announced the government was effectively backing down.
Coming on top of earlier concessions to rebels that exempted existing Pip claimants from any reforms designed to save cash, the Labour rebels have now effectively gutted the landmark welfare reform Bill that Mr Starmer’s government had put forward.
The Bill as originally proposed was supposed to save £5 billion for the UK’s straitened Treasury. Now that it has been pulled apart by the rebellion, the UK’s chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will have to try to find most of those savings elsewhere.
As well as giving the chancellor a fiscal headache, the rebels have also seriously dented the prime minister’s authority as he approaches his first anniversary in the job.
Mr Starmer’s U-turn on Pip may have saved him from an embarrassing defeat in a parliament where he is supposed to wield a 165-seat working majority.
But it was also just the latest in a string of domestic U-turns that have sparked disquiet among Labour MPs over his leadership.
Earlier in the Commons, in advance of the vote that was due soon after 7pm, MPs held an emotionally charged debate over the proposed welfare cuts, with Labour MPs effectively providing both a government position and their own opposition.
The drama had started for the government last week when it belatedly realised that enough rebel MPs – the total at one stage stood near 130 – were prepared to back a so-called “wrecking amendment”. It would have killed the original Bill and seriously undermined Mr Starmer’s ability to govern.
After negotiations between rebels and emissaries for Mr Starmer’s Downing Street operation, the concession was given exempting existing Pip claimants, and it was expected the government would win the vote.
It became clear on Monday and Tuesday, however, that there was still huge concern among Labour MPs over the timing eligibility changes.
Marie Tidball, one of the few visibly physically disabled MPs in the Commons, broke down in tears as she said she would go against her own government “with a heavy and broken heart” because it wasn’t protecting disabled people.
Meg Hillier, a Labour MP who led the original rebellion, said she would back the government but warned Downing Street that backbench MPs were not “message replicators” or “voting fodder”.
