Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are facing a growing backbench revolt as civil war threatens to engulf Labour. Labour MPs seized Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s humiliating u-turn on winter fuel payments to call for more benefits spending. Ms Reeves’ £1.25 billion plan unveiled on Monday will see automatic payments worth up to £300 given to pensioners with an income less than £35,000 a year. But Nadia Whittome, the Labour MP for Nottingham East, warned ministers they risked making a “similar mistake” if they tighten the eligibility criteria for personal independence payments, known as Pip.
Leeds East MP Richard Burgon also called on pensions minister Torsten Bell to “listen now” so that backbenchers can help the Government “get it right”.
In her warning, Ms Whittome said she was not asking Mr Bell “to keep the status quo or not to support people into work” and added: “I’m simply asking him not to cut disabled people’s benefits.”
The pensions minister, who works in both the Treasury and Department for Work and Pensions, replied that the numbers of people receiving Pip is set to “continue to grow every single year in the years ahead, after the changes set out by this Government”.
In its Pathways to Work green paper, the Government proposed a new eligibility requirement, so Pip claimants must score a minimum of four points on one daily living activity, such as preparing food, washing and bathing, using the toilet or reading, to receive the daily living element of the benefit.
“This means that people who only score the lowest points on each of the Pip daily living activities will lose their entitlement in future,” the document noted.
Mr Burgon told the Commons: “As a Labour MP who voted against the winter fuel payment cuts, I very much welcome this change in position, but can I urge the minister and the Government to learn the lessons of this and one of the lessons is, listen to backbenchers?
“If the minister and the Government listen to backbenchers, that can help the Government get it right, help the Government avoid getting it wrong, and so what we don’t want is to be here in a year or two’s time with a minister sent to the despatch box after not listening to backbenchers on disability benefit cuts, making another U-turn again.”
Mr Bell replied that it was “important to listen to backbenchers, to frontbenchers”.
Opposition MPs cheered when the minister added: “It’s even important to listen to members opposite on occasion.”
Liberal Democrat MP Mike Martin warned that “judging by the questions from his own backbenchers, it seems that we’re going to have further U-turns on Pip and on the two-child benefit cap”.
The Tunbridge Wells MP asked Mr Bell: “To save his colleagues anguish, will he let us know now when those U-turns are coming?”
The minister replied: “What Labour MPs want to see is a Labour Government bringing down child poverty, and that’s what we’re going to do
“What Labour MPs want to see is a Government that can take the responsible decisions, including difficult ones on tax and on means testing the winter fuel payment so that we can invest in public services and turn around the disgrace that has become Britain’s public realm for far too long.”
Conservative former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey had earlier asked whether the Chancellor, “now that she and the Government have got a taste for climbdowns”, would “reverse the equally ridiculous national insurance contribution (Nic) rises, which is destroying jobs, and the inheritance tax changes, which is destroying farms and family businesses”.
Mr Bell said: “This is a party opposite that has learned no lessons whatsoever, that thinks it can come to this chamber, call for more spending, oppose every tax rise and expect to ever be taken seriously again – they will not.”
Labour MP Rebecca Long-Bailey pressed the Government to make changes to the two-child benefit cap, which means most parents cannot claim for more than two children.
“It’s the right thing to do to lift pensioners out of poverty, and I’m sure that both he and the Chancellor also agree that it’s right to lift children out of poverty,” the Salford MP told the Commons.
“So can he reassure this House that he and the Chancellor are doing all they can to outline plans to lift the two-child cap on universal credit as soon as possible?”
Mr Bell replied: “All levers to reduce child poverty are on the table.
“The child poverty strategy will be published in the autumn.”
He added: “If we look at who is struggling most, having to turn off their heating, it is actually younger families with children that are struggling with that.
“So she’s absolutely right to raise this issue, it is one of the core purposes of this Government, we cannot carry on with a situation where large families, huge percentages of them, are in poverty.”