Keir Starmer is poised to make humiliating concessions on benefits reforms today after failing to quell a massive Labour revolt.
Ministers have been hinting at a climbdown as they face a disastrous defeat in a crunch Commons vote on the flagship legislation.
Despite frantic direct pleas from the PM and Chancellor Rachel Reeves, more MPs have added their names to a fatal amendment overnight. Around 130 have now publicly declared they will oppose the Second Reading of the Bill, easily enough to overturn even Labour’s massive majority.
There is speculation that Sir Keir could offer to widen eligibility for Personal Independence Payment (Pip) or weaken curbs on Universal Credit – blowing a hole in hopes the proposals will save the government £5billion.
He has dismissed what has been described as the nuclear option of delaying or abandoning the package altogether.
Ms Reeves has been among the strongest backers of the reforms, as she desperately struggles to balance the books without resorting to more tax hikes. Even with the changes the benefits bill was still due to keep spiralling, just at a slightly slower rate.
In a grim sign for the premier, bitter infighting has been surfacing with MPs and aides swiping at No10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney. Some have been demanding ‘regime change’ complaining that Downing Street is dominated by ‘over-excitable boys’.
A No10 source said: ‘The broken welfare system is failing the most vulnerable and holding too many people back.
‘It’s fair and responsible to fix it. There is broad consensus across the party on this.’
The source insisted the reforms were ‘underpinned by… Labour values’.
They said: ‘Delivering fundamental change is not easy, and we all want to get it right, so of course we’re talking to colleagues about the Bill and the changes it will bring, we want to start delivering this together on Tuesday.’
Commons Environmental Audit Select Committee chairman Toby Perkins, Stoke-on-Trent Central MP Gareth Snell, Newcastle upon Tyne MP Mary Glindon and Tamworth MP Sarah Edwards.
North Ayrshire and Arran MP Irene Campbell and Colchester MP Pam Cox, both of whom won their seats in the party’s 2024 landslide election victory, have also added their names.
Lord Blunkett last night suggested the PM had failed to focus on the peril the Government is in because he has spent so much time abroad.
And he warned that Sir Keir will be forced to hold a formal confidence vote if he loses. No government Bill has failed to pass second reading – typically a verdict on the broad principles of plans rather than details – since 1986.
The Labour grandee told LBC: ‘If they lost it, they’d have to go for a vote of confidence, I think.
‘But the embarrassment of that one year in leaves you with two problems. One is you’ve been humiliated, and the second is you’ve still got the problem. The welfare issue has not gone away. So, solving the problem, not taking the hit, is the sensible solution.’
Urging a delay in the vote, he added: ‘Keir Starmer, for very understandable reasons, has been diverted on to the international agenda. I think he now needs to come back from Holland and be absolutely focused on this.’
Facing questions at the Nato summit yesterday, Sir Keir bridled at suggestions he had failed to read the mood of Labour MPs.
He risked inflaming the mood by shrugging off the insurrection as ‘noises off’, insisting benefits reform must happen and the vote will go ahead on Tuesday.
Angela Rayner delivered the same message as she stood in at PMQs.
But by the evening the tone had changed, with the deputy PM telling ITV that talks with rebels are ‘ongoing’.
Existing claimants will be given a 13-week phase-out period of financial support, a move seen as a bid to head off opposition by aiming to soften the impact of the changes.
Sir Keir is finally due to take his feet in the Commons today, giving a statement expected to cover the G7 in Canada, Nato summit and Middle East crisis. It has been over two weeks since he spoke in the chamber.
Touring broadcast studios this morning, trade minister Douglas Alexander admitted that the government was thinking about how to ‘implement’ the intention of curbing benefits.
He told Sky News: ‘Everyone agrees welfare needs reform and that the system was broken. Everyone recognises you’re trying to take people off benefit and into work, because that’s better for them and also better for our fiscal position.
‘And everyone recognises that we need to protect the most vulnerable.
‘Where there is honestly some disagreement at the moment, is on the issue of ‘how do you give implementation to those principles?”
He suggested that normally the second reading of a bill, its first Commons test, was a vote on the principle behind a piece of legislation rather than the way it will be implemented.
‘The effect of what’s happened with this reasoned amendment being tabled is that that’s brought forward the discussion of how to give implementation to those principles,’ he said.
‘So given the high level of agreement on the principles, the discussions over the coming days will really be about the implementation of those principles.’
Mr Alexander also played down the attacks on Mr McSweeney. ‘I’m much less interested in the gossip about SW1 than whether this legislation works on the streets, in the towns, in the communities right across the country,’ he said.
The minister said it was ‘for the Prime Minister to make his judgments’ about who works in Downing Street.
‘The fact is that team delivered us an historic victory only last July, against expectations,’ Mr Alexander said.
‘The task of government is hard, there are always going to be people with strong opinions on all sides of an issue like welfare reform.’
