UK Government welfare bill passes after major concessions

The UK government's welfare bill has passed a House of Commons vote after another major concession to Labour rebels.

335 MPs voted in favour of the legislation on Tuesday night, while 260 voted against it, giving the government a winning majority of 75. Its actual majority is 165.

While the government won the vote, the process leading up to this point was a bruising one for Keir Starmer, with the prime minister having to offer a series of concessions to avoid a major Labour backbench rebellion.

The latest concession came just hours before the vote, which social security minister Stephen Timms announced from the despatch box.

Scotland's social justice secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said despite the changes, the bill would still "plunge more people into poverty".

She added: "Their approach also risks creating a deeply unfair two-tier system, pushing the impact of cuts onto future applicants for disability benefits... I want to reassure disabled people in Scotland, that the Scottish Government will not cut Scotland’s Adult Disability Payment - we will not let disabled people down as the UK Government has done."

The late concession suggested the government was worried that it risked losing the vote, despite its 165-seat majority. At least 83 Labour MPs would have needed to vote against the legislation to defeat the government.

Timms said that planned changes to Personal Independence Payment (Pip)  for new claimants would no longer be in the bill. 

This followed numerous Labour MPs expressing concern that the stricter new rules would come into effect before a review into Pip eligibility would have a chance to feed its findings back to ministers.

The late concession created confusion in the House of Commons, with MPs, including Labour backbenchers, arguing there was little left to vote on, with some MPs calling for the bill to be withdrawn.

Ian Byrne, MP for Liverpool West Derby, said it was an "absolute shambles, it's immoral, it's being rewritten on the fly"; MP for City of Durham Mary Kelly Foy she she "popped out [of the chamber] for a banana earlier and when I came back in things had changed again".

There are also questions over how much money will be saved by the welfare reforms following the concessions.

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall sought to defend the revised plans, saying the government was determined to fix "the broken benefits system that we inherited from the party opposite, and to deliver a better life for millions of people across our country".

It was unclear ahead of the vote what the repercussions for Labour MPs voting against would be, with rebel MPs telling PoliticsHome they had not been threatened with losing the whip.

A rebel Labour MP said the management of the situation by No 10 had been an “utter shambles”. They said they had not had much engagement from the government due to being seen as a “lost cause”, and had not been threatened with losing the whip. 

One rebel Labour MP told PoliticsHome, Holyrood's sister publication, ahead of the vote: “I will vote against the bill, even if it means losing the whip.”

Work and pensions committee chair Debbie Abrahams, a key Labour rebel who was involved in the initial amendment to the bill, called the reforms a "dog’s breakfast" during the debate and said the changes were "being driven by the need to get four points to the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] to enable it to be scored for the budget".

Meg Hillier, the Labour chair of the Treasury committee, withdrew her reasoned amendment to kill the bill overnight after expressing satisfaction with the concessions made. 

Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Hillier urged MPs to "bank" the concessions gained and "continue to fight with the passion that members have demonstrated today for the rights of disabled people".

"I would always rather see a Labour government. Divided parties don’t hold power, divided parties don’t hold government.

"If we want to see our values played out in this country, I think we need to vote for this today."

House of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle selected Labour MP Rachael Maskell's wrecking amendment ahead of the vote, which was inserted on Monday night. 

Maskell said the "Dickensian cuts" being put forward by the Labour government "belong to a different era and a different party".

42 Labour MPs voted for her wrecking amendment, amounting to a significant rebellion.

Dr Marie Tidball, who also voted against the legislation on Tuesday, told the chamber that she is "one of the few visible disabled MPs in parliament".

Tidball held back tears throughout her speech, saying she could not support the proposed changes to Pipas currently drafted on the face of the bill".

"The concessions the government has now announced are significant [but] proposed changes at committee stage are still currently projected to put 150,000 people into poverty. I cannot accept this."

A version of this article originally appeared on PoliticsHome.