Reform UK MPs Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick voted with Labour to scrap the two-child benefit cap, it has emerged. It is believed that the pair ended up with Sir Keir Starmer’s party in the aye lobby yesterday during the Bill’s second reading.
Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick got on their phones trying to get instructions from Farage as to whether they should be there or not, a source told Sky News’s Beth Rigby, and they tried to leave but got trapped as the doors were locked. Reform has confirmed that this happened, adding that it was a “genuine mistake” and neither MP registered a vote. All other Reform MPs voted against the legislation.
Reform MP Lee Anderson said: “The loss of one pub is not just the loss of livelihood for a landlord, or the loss of a local employment hub. The loss of one pub is a loss to all of us as inheritors of a tradition dating back to Roman rule.”
He added: “Yet the Conservatives, and now Labour, have facilitated the closure of thousands of pubs over the last decade. Any contrition they show is false.”
The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced the scrapping of the two-child cap in November as the Government aimed to appease backbench Labour MPs following a major rebellion over welfare plans.
The Work and Pensions Secretary, Pat McFadden, said the policy had seen children used as pawns for almost a decade.
He told MPs: “It (the policy) was never really about welfare reform, nor was it even about saving money.
“No, this was always first and foremost a political exercise, an attempt to set a trap for opponents, with children used as the pawns in the exercise.
“This was all about the politics of dividing lines, dividing lines between so-called shirkers and strivers, between the old distinction of the deserving and undeserving poor.”
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