Labour suspends SEVEN MP’s for voting against the Government on the two child benefit Cap!

Labour have withdrawn the whip from SEVEN MP’s, after they voted against the Government in an SNP motion to have the two child benefit cap scrapped. The cost of reversing the 2015 Tory policy brought in by former Chancellor George Osbourne, is estimated to be £3.7bn per year.

The cap has been blamed for record levels of child poverty in the UK, but Labour have instead promised to setup a taskforce committed to formulating a new far reaching strategy to tackle the issue. Sir Keir Starmer previously supported scrapping the two-child cap, but polling shows the UK public broadly support keeping it in place.



The seven suspended left-wing Labour MP’s are firm supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and have been labeled the “usual suspects”. Richard Burgon, John McDonnell, Imran Hussain, Apsana Begum, Zarah Sultana, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Ian Byrne have had the whip withdrawn for six months, after which the decision will be reviewed.

MPs rejected the SNP amendment by 363 votes to 103, in the first major test of the new Labour government’s authority. In statements following the suspensions, Sultana said she would “always stand up for the most vulnerable in our society”, adding that the cap would “lift 33,000 children out of poverty”.

Prior to the vote, McDonnell said: “I don’t like voting for other parties’ amendments, but I’m following Keir Starmer’s example as he said put country before party.”

Begum said she voted against the cap because it had “contributed to rising and deepening levels of child poverty and food insecurity for many East End families”.

Burgon said he was “disappointed” by the decision to suspend him, explaining that “many struggling families” in his Leeds East constituency had raised the cap with him.

Byrne said the “best way” to help his Liverpool West Derby constituents living in poverty was to scrap the cap.



The Burning Questions

Those in support of the two-child benefit cap argue that their taxes shouldn’t be used for families who choose to have more children than they can afford to support. However, those in favour of scrapping the cap argue that children don’t ask to be born and shoudn’t be made to suffer unnecessarily.

This is yet another issue we need to have an honest and open conversation about, because the money just isn’t there to sort out every problem the Tories have left behind, in one Parliamentary term. Hopefully we’ll get more details on Labour’s solution to Tory child poverty soon.