Labour MPs push for an amendment to the welfare bill

The Labour welfare rebellion advances further, with Helen Goodman tabling a ‘reasoned amendment’ to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. She says she has the support of 40 Labour MPs for the amendment, which reads as follows:

‘That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, notwithstanding its potentially useful provisions on apprenticeships, because the Bill would have the effect of ignoring the plight of children in low income working households, removing the concept of child poverty from the statute book, increasing the number of children, especially those from large families, living in poverty, worsening work incentives for people whose incomes are below average and reducing the incomes of sick and disabled people.’

Goodman supports Yvette Cooper’s campaign for the Labour leadership, but the Cooper camp say that this was not something they helped draft and it is ‘100 per cent nothing to do with us’.