“I don’t start from a position of tough, but from a position of compassion,” Kendall said. Labour MPs raised their eyebrows. Some stared at their feet. Even the ambitious backbenchers who still hanker for jobs were only half-hearted in their murmurs of support.
Last week, over half of the Cabinet urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to rethink her plans to scale back welfare cuts with suggestions she could instead change her budgetary rules to allow higher borrowing or raise taxes instead.
When she got to her feet on Tuesday, Kendall ruled out freezing or means testing personal independence payments (PIP) given to people who have difficulty completing everyday tasks or getting around as a result of a long-term physical or mental health condition. But she announced the Government will significantly tighten access to the daily living component of the benefit, affecting hundreds of thousands of people.
Kendall has been praised by Labour MP colleagues for “being very accessible” to discuss their concerns. Weeks of outreach by her team and Starmer’s key lieutenants in No 10 last week were supposed to have made the case to fractious Labour MPs. Reassuring calls continued up until late last night and a bundle of facts and figures were distributed to MPs on Monday.
Armed with these numbers, the Government hopes Labour MPs will see the overriding macro scale of the challenge ahead of the Spring Statement next week, when the Office for Budget Responsibility sets out the policy’s final costs amid the wider constraints on the budget. But that doesn’t take into account that for Labour MPs the personal is the political.
Another questioned whether the Government should have conducted the debate over welfare cuts in a semi-public manner.
Back in Westminster the question that will concern party managers over the coming weeks is how the outrage and concern to the PIP changes will manifest. Do Labour MPs – some of whom are still very new – keep writing stiff letters to the Government? Or does the issue instead build into an actual rebellion, perhaps when the issue comes to a vote, probably in the autumn?
Debbie Abrahams, the chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee who has been co-ordinating opposition to the changes, said ominously, “I would put that there are alternative, more compassionate ways to balance the books rather than on the back of sick and disabled people.”
square JESSIE HEWITSON
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Read MoreLabour MP Clive Lewis said the Government’s welfare reforms will cause “pain and difficulty” to millions of people “who are using food banks, who are using social supermarkets, people who are on the brink”.
“Reducing welfare by £5 billion is an awful political choice,” Labour MP Brian Leishman told The i Paper. “This is not what the Labour Party should ever do.”
It’s the second category of unknowns which is harder to gauge in a governing party where the whips are still unable to recall the name of every MP in their flock.
Rebellion – serious or not – will be the discussion in the Commons tearoom and on MPs’ WhatsApp groups in the coming weeks.
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