UK government faces key test in welfare reform bill vote

Keir Starmer faces crunch vote on welfare spending after watering down planned cuts to disability benefits.

The United Kingdom’s Labour government hopes to limit a rebellion over welfare reform from its own politicians in a key vote in Parliament, just days after attempting to win them over with concessions.

Almost a year after his party won a landslide election victory, Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces one of the toughest tests of his premiership on Tuesday, when MPs vote on his government’s welfare plans.

Angered by proposals to change the eligibility criteria of the country’s main disability benefit and to reduce health-related support received by those on low incomes, more than 120 Labour politicians signalled last week that they would be voting against the bill.

In a bid to appease them, Downing Street announced a set of concessions on Friday, including a pledge that current claimants of the disability benefit, which is known as the personal independence payment (Pip), would not be affected by the cuts.

The government also promised to launch a review into Pip, led by Disability Minister Stephen Timms.

Speaking on Friday, senior Labour backbencher Meg Hillier, one of the rebels, described the U-turn as a “workable compromise”.

However, shortly ahead of Tuesday’s vote, it appeared that dozens of Labour politicians still opposed the bill, with British media reporting that at least 35 were planning to go against the government.

The vote comes after 86 disability and human rights groups issued a joint statement on Monday urging politicians to vote against the welfare reform bill.

Rachael Maskell, a Labour MP and critic of the proposal, wrote on X on Monday evening that disabled people “have yet to have agency in this process”.

“It is time their voices were heard,” she added.

People take part in a protest against disability welfare cuts on June 30, 2025, in London, England [Carl Court/Getty Images]

The disputes around the government’s welfare reform bill have led to questions being asked once more about Starmer, who has a working majority of 165 in the House of Commons.

“It’s a failure of leadership for a prime minister with such a big majority to not be able to get their agenda through,” said Rob Ford, a politics professor at the University of Manchester.

“I can’t think of many examples of a prime minister in post-war politics suffering such a big setback when presiding over such a strong position in the Commons,” Ford noted.

Friday’s concessions were not the only time Starmer had made a U-turn in recent weeks. On June 9, his government announced that it was reversing a policy to scrap a winter heating benefit for millions of pensioners.

The latest polling shows that Labour is trailing the right-wing populist party Reform UK, which outperformed its rivals in local elections in May.

Source:

Al Jazeera and news agencies