Keir Starmer suspends seven rebel Labour MPs who voted to get rid of two-child benefit cap
23 July 2024, 19:36 | Updated: 23 July 2024, 20:20
Keir Starmer has suspended seven rebel Labour MPs who voted in favour of getting rid of the two-child benefit cap.
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The SNP brought an amendment to the King's Speech to scrap the cap, which limits parents' benefits to their first two children.
Some 103 MPs voted for the amendment, and 363 against.
Seven Labour rebels voted for the amendment: former Chancellor John McDonnell, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Rebecca Long Bailey and Zarah Sultana.
The amendment had been backed by the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP, the Alliance Party and several independent MPs, such as former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The government disappointed some of its MPs in the King's Speech by not axing the benefits cap, which was brought in by the Conservatives.
Ministers launched a 'child poverty taskforce' instead.
Read more: Two-child benefit cap amounts to eugenics, public health expert claims ahead of MPs' vote
Sir Michael Marmot says two-child benefit cap is 'almost a form of eugenics'
Many Labour MPs oppose the cap, but it has been estimated that getting rid of it would cost taxpayers £3 billion per year - and the government has said they are unwilling to break their strict fiscal rules to fund new measures.
The SNP's Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said in response to the vote failing: "Tonight, the Labour Party has failed its first major test in government.
"Labour MPs had the opportunity to deliver meaningful change from years of Tory misrule by immediately lifting thousands of children out of poverty - they have made a political choice not to do so.
'There is nobody in Labour who supports the two-child benefit cap'
"This is now the Labour government's two child cap - and it must take ownership of the damage it is causing, including the appalling levels of poverty in the UK.
"The SNP will campaign vigorously for the cap to be abolished at the earliest opportunity. It is the very worst of Westminster's welfare cuts, and every day it remains more children suffer.
"The Labour government has a moral duty to go much further and faster to tackle child poverty. Scrapping the cap is the bare minimum we should expect."
Children's Commissioner wants government to 'get on with' lifting the two-child benefit cap
Michael Marmot, a professor of public health at UCL, told LBC's Andrew Marr ahead of the vote that the cap was harmful to children's wellbeing.
He said: "These children can't wait and it also bothers me of what it says about us as a society. It's almost a form of eugenics saying if poor families choose to have extra children, we're going to clobber them.
"If you consign something like 1.6 million children to further hardship, that's going to affect their trajectory for the rest of their lives.
"I can't tell you how to juggle public sector pay and child poverty but it will damage children's mental health, their physical health, we know the stress of poverty in parents gets passed onto the children."
