Labour MPs defy Harman over welfare reform vote
LABOUR was last night in disarray after a fifth of the party’s MPs rebelled during a vote on Tory welfare reforms.
Around 48 Labour MPs openly defied interim leader Harriet Harman by refusing to abstain on the Government’s Welfare Reform and Work Bill, which was passed with 308 votes in favour and 124 against.
Miss Harman believes that her party should not oppose all of George Osborne’s benefits cuts to avoid the charge that Labour is the “party of welfare”.
Rather than voting against the Bill, Miss Harman wanted her backbenchers to vote for a Labour amendment and to then abstain on its second reading.
The rebellion underlines the split in the Labour Party following the general election. Jeremy Corbyn was the only candidate for the leadership of the party to rebel against Miss Harman.
Andy Burnham, the front-runner for the leadership, refused to vote against the Bill in the Commons. However, he claimed last night that he would now oppose it.
“Tonight I am firing the starting gun on Labour’s opposition to this Bill,” he wrote on Facebook.
“If I am elected leader in September, I am determined that Labour will fight this regressive Bill word by word, line by line.”
Mr Burnham had been accused by MPs of damaging the party by “flipflopping” over whether to oppose the controversial welfare reforms.
In a series of hustings during the leadership contest, he had expressed anger at Ms Harman’s decision not to oppose the measures after she suggested there was no public appetite for rejecting them.
But the shadow health secretary issued a statement in a letter to fellow MPs hours before the vote saying he would now abide by collective responsibility by abstaining.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said: “It’s clear that Labour are still the same old anti-worker party – just offering more welfare, more borrowing and more taxes.”