The coalition’s Welfare Benefits Uprating Bill (artfully renamed by Andrew Rawnsley as “The Make Labour Look Like the Party for Skiving Fat Slobs bill”), which introduces a 1 per cent cap on benefit increases for each of the next three years, comfortably made its way past the Commons last night, with MPs voting by 305 votes to 246 to give the bill a third reading.
When MPs first voted on the bill earlier this month there were six Lib Dem rebels. Four of the party’s 57 MPs – Julian Huppert, John Leech, Sarah Teather, David Ward – voted not to give the bill a second reading, while Andrew George and Charles Kennedy formally abstained by voting in both lobbies. Last night this total increased to nine. Below, I’ve listed those who voted against the bill and, where applicable, have included how far up they appear on Labour’s target list of 106 seats. The Conservatives intend to target 20 Lib Dem seats at the general election but have yet to release a full list.
1. Andrew George (St Ives)
Majority: 1,719
2. Martin Horwood (Cheltenham)
Majority: 4,920
3. Julian Huppert (Cambridge)
Majority: 6,792
Labour target 103
4. Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber)
Majority: 13,070
5. John Leech (Manchester Withington)
Majority: 1,894
Labour target 31
6. Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute)
Majority: 3,431
Labour target 64
7. Adrian Sanders (Torbay)
Majority: 4,078
8. Sarah Teather (Brent Central)
Majority: 1,345
Labour target 23
9. Mark Williams (Ceredigion)
Majority: 8,324
The most notable moment in the debate came when Labour’s shadow employment minister Stephen Timms was asked whether it was his party’s policy that benefits should be uprated in line with inflation, rather than by 1 per cent (a real-terms cut). Timms replied: “Uprating should indeed be in line with inflation, as it always was in the past.” He later added: “We reject the proposal to restrict the uprating of social security and tax credits to 1% in our view, as I have already said uprating should be in line with inflation and it should be assessed as it always has been at the end of the preceding year.”
Timms’s words were significant because, as I noted yesterday, Labour’s amendment to the bill simply called for the cancellation of the 1 per cent rise, rather than for benefits to rise in line with the Consumer Price Index as normal. The Tories leapt on his statement as proof that Labour was committed to inflationary rises in benefits for the next three years. The party’s Tiggerish chairman Grant Shapps commented: “Labour have committed to pay for more generous benefit rises with more borrowing and more debt. That’s exactly how they got us into this mess in the first place. Labour haven’t learnt and would do it all over again.”
But Labour has since argued that Timms’s words only reflected the party’s existing position of increasing benefits in line with inflation this year (2013-14) and did not amount to a commitment to do so in 2014-15 and 2015-16. As the BBC’s James Lansdale notes, on 6 January Ed Balls told Sky News: “The normal thing is to index and the government would normally have indexed in line with inflation and to be honest, I think that would be fair.” He added: “It’s not responsible for me as a shadow chancellor to come here two and a half years ahead and tell you what we can do about taxes or spending or benefits.”
So, in other words, nothing has changed. But expect the Tories to continue to challenge Labour to give a much clearer indication of how it would behave in 2015.
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