Keir Starmer Makes U Turn On Welfare To Avoid Parliament Loss

Keir Starmer has killed off a major plank of Labour’s flagship welfare reforms as the government desperately tries to avoid an embarrassing Commons defeat.

The prime minister caved in to another key demand from rebel Labour MPs just 90 minutes before the crunch vote was due to take place.

It came amid government fears that previous concessions to the rebels would not be enough to guarantee parliament would back the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments Bill.

Thanks to the last-minute climbdown, MPs backed the legislation by 335 to 260.

The initial plan had been to cut the health element of universal credit and make it harder for disabled people to claim PIP in a bid to save £5 billion from the welfare bill.

More than 120 Labour MPs backed an amendment which would have killed off the changes, forcing the prime minister to announce that current recipients of the benefits would not lose out.

In a further climbdown just 90 minutes before the Commons vote, disability minister Stephen Timms told MPs announced there will be no changes to PIP rules at all until after he has finished a review of the whole system.

Given that disability groups are feeding into the review, it means the most contentious part of the reforms are now unlikely to ahead.

Timms told MPs the government had listened to the “concerns” of Labour MPs and that his review would be completed by autumn next year.

The climbdown is also a humiliation for work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, who had earlier told MPs that the changes to PIP would definitely be going ahead.

One Labour MP told HuffPost UK the situation was “a fucking farce”.

In a further headache for the government, the latest climbdown means the £5 billion of savings the reforms were supposed to raise has almost been completely wiped out.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves will now have to find the money to plug that black hole in her budget, as well as the £1.5bn cost of Starmer’s U-turn on winter fuel payments last month.

Posting on X, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said: “This is an utter capitulation. Labour’s welfare bill is now a TOTAL waste of time. It effectively saves £0, helps no one into work, and does NOT control spending. It’s pointless. They should bin it, do their homework, and come back with something serious. Starmer cannot govern.”

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper said: “The government should stop tying themselves in endless knots and put this bill out of its misery.

“This has been a mess from start to finish and it’s clear that this legislation is not fit for purpose. Ministers are asking MPs to vote on a bill on which the ink hasn’t dried before it is blotted out once again.

“The government needs to go back to the drawing board and pull this bill.”