Labour doubles down on welfare vote despite massive revolt
The Labour government has doubled down on holding a vote on its controversial welfare bill – worth £4.8bn in savings – as soon as next week, despite opposition from more than 130 of its own backbenchers.
Angela Rayner told the House of Commons on Wednesday afternoon the government would press ahead with reforms to personal independence payments (Pips) and universal credit.
The deputy prime minister echoed Keir Starmer, who missed Prime Minister’s Questions due to a Nato summit in the Hague, in confirming that a vote on the bill would take place after a debate next Tuesday.
Standing in for the Prime Minister, Rayner said the government would not turn its back on flagship policies put together by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall.
“I’ll tell (shadow chancellor Mel Stride) why we’re pressing ahead with our reforms, and that is because we’re investing a billion pounds into tailored employment support, a right to try to help more people back into work, and ending reassessments for the most severely disabled who will never be able to work.
“We won’t walk away and stand by and abandon millions of people trapped in the failing system left behind by him and his colleagues.”
The Conservatives have indicated they could support the bill on the condition that Labour committed to further welfare savings.
Stride also said Labour was betraying businesses up and down the country by refusing to rule out tax rises.
“The Chancellor said, and I quote, ‘I am not coming back for more taxes’. British businesses have been hit again and again by Labour’s economic mismanagement. They are desperate for certainty.”
Some of the reforms included in Labour’s welfare bill include a tightening of eligibility criteria for disability payments and a freeze on incapacity benefits under universal credit.
The small changes are seen as a key step in getting inactive Britons back into the labour market and stopping the welfare budget from costing the government billions of pounds more in the coming year.
Welfare reforms to make spending more ‘sustainable’
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicted the cost of welfare to the government could reach £75bn by 2030, up from around £48.5bn spent in 2024.
But the bill has sparked a rebellion among Labour backbenchers, with as many as 134 MPs signing up to an amendment that calls for a delay pending a review and full consultation on the bill.
The amendment could thwart Labour’s efforts to fast-track savings and would represent yet another setback in policymaking after winter fuel payments worth £1.25bn were reinstated for three quarters of pensioners.
Opposition to the welfare bill includes Treasury select committee chair Meg Hillier, former minister Louise Haigh, former leadership candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey and several newer MPs elected last year.
In an appearance before the Work and Pensions Committee, social security minister Stephen Timms pointed out the government had to make changes urgently to stop costs from racking up.
Timms said the cost of Pips had increased from £12bn before the pandemic to around £22bn last year.
“That is not a sustainable trajectory. So there was a need for urgency with the changes.”
Several government ministers, including Rayner, have reportedly been making efforts to persuade backbenchers to back the bill.
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, said earlier on Wednesday the government would wait until the OBR made its judgement of economic forecasts in the autumn before it made a full decision on taxes.
But Jones did not dispute suggestions that council tax would rise by five per cent in order to fund spending commitments laid out in Chancellor Reeves’ Spending Review.
“We have assumed that councils will behave the same way they have recently,” he said.