Back in 2015, during the first Labour leadership contest in which Jeremy Corbyn was a candidate, the House of Commons passed the Tories’ Welfare, Reform and Work Bill, a typical Tory attack on the poor from which the increasing numbers of people in poverty are suffering today. Here is a brief account of what happened, ending with the speech that day by John McDonnell (now Labour’s Shadow Chancellor) which I offer as a message of hope as we start what promises to be a challenging year.

What it was all about

On 20 July 2015, the government was determined to enforce its austerity programme and the Bill contained measures under which the most vulnerable in society would have to bear the heaviest burden: measures proposed in the Bill meant that, for the first time, tax credits and family benefits under Universal Credit would  be limited to the first two children and that most working age benefits would be frozen for four years from 2016.^[1] People claiming the working element of the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) would have their payments reduced to match the Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA),^[2] and the benefit cap was to be reduced from £26,000 a year to £23,000 in London, and £20,000 in the rest of the country.^[3] Moreover, many young people between the ages of 18 and 21 would no longer be able to claim Housing Benefit.^[4] It might be thought that Labour would vote against such measures, which impacted so negatively on the poor. But the party’s Acting Leader, Harriet Harman, decided otherwise. She told Andrew Neil on The Sunday Politics:

We won’t oppose the Welfare Bill, we won’t oppose the household benefit cap. [We won’t oppose] what they brought forward in relation to restricting benefits and tax credits for people with three or more children … We’ve got to recognise why the Tories are in government and not us, not because [voters] love the Tories but because they didn’t trust us on the economy and on benefits.^[5]

Harman went on to impose a three-line whip on Labour MPs, instructing them to abstain in the Commons vote on the Bill. This caused much dissent in the Parliamentary Labour Party (the PLP), and Harman tried to defuse the crisis by tabling a “reasoned amendment” to the Bill, setting out Labour’s objections to it, but supporting controls on the overall costs of social security and backing proposals such as the lower benefits cap, the removal of tax credits from families with more than two children and the replacing of mortgage interest support with loans. The amendment also said that the Bill should not be given a second reading but Harman insisted that, if the amendment was defeated, MPs should abstain when it came to the vote on the whole Bill. Helen Goodman, the Labour MP for Bishop Auckland, expressed her confusion:

I cannot see why if you table a reasoned amendment rejecting a bill you would then go on to abstain in a further vote on the bill. It would be best to oppose [it] all the way through because of the damage the bill does to people in poverty.^[6]

When the amendment was defeated, Goodman went on to vote against the Bill, as did 47 other Labour MPs, including Corbyn.

Corbyn was the only leadership candidate to vote against the Bill. During the debate, John McDonnell made the speech which best reflected the Corbyn leadership team’s view of the Bill: “I make this clear,” he said:

I would swim through vomit to vote against the Bill, and listening to some of the nauseating speeches tonight, I think we might have to.

Poverty in my constituency is not a lifestyle choice; it is imposed on people. We hear lots about how high the welfare bill is, but let us understand why that is the case. The housing benefit bill is so high because for generations we have failed to build council houses, we have failed to control rents and we have done nothing about the 300,000 properties that stand empty in this country. Tax credits are so high because pay is so low. The reason pay is so low is that employers have exploited workers and we have removed the trade union rights that enabled people to be protected at work. Fewer than a third of our workers are now covered by collective bargaining agreements. Unemployment is so high because we have failed to invest in our economy, and we have allowed the deindustrialisation of the north, Scotland and elsewhere. That is why the welfare bill is so high, and the Bill does as all other welfare reform Bills in recent years have done and blames the poor for their own poverty, not the system … We need a proper debate about how we go forward investing in housing, lifting wages, restoring trade union rights and ensuring that we get people back to work and do not have high pockets of deprivation in areas such as mine and around the country … I say to Labour Members that people out there do not understand reasoned amendments; they want to know whether we voted for or against the Bill. Tonight I will vote against it.

The speech: https://youtu.be/4rxKXw7O_pQ

[1] “Benefit changes: Who will be affected?”, BBC News, 8 July 2015: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33429390 (accessed 29/3/2017).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Labour won’t oppose Welfare Bill”, BBC News, 12 July 2015: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-33498110/labour-won-t-oppose-welfare-bill (accessed 2/1/2018).

[6] Cited, “Harman seeks to end labour row with reasoned amendment to welfare bill”, The Guardian, 16 July 2015: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/16/harman-seeks-to-end-labour-row-with-reasoned-amendment-to-welfare-bill (accessed 28/3/2017).