Welfare Reform Bill — Financial penalties should not apply to single parents of under-fives — rejected — 10 Nov 2009 at 17:15

Stewart Jackson MP, Peterborough voted in the minority (No).

The majority of MPs voted for financial penalties incurred under the Welfare Reform Bill to apply to single parents of children younger than five years old.

They did this by voting to remove an amendment to Clause 2 that was added in the House of Lords during their debate,[6] which said:

  • Nothing in this section shall cause any financial sanction to be imposed in the case of a single parent with a child under five years of age.[3]

Clause 2 of the Welfare Reform Bill is intended to amend the Social Security Administration Act 1992 adding a section on "Work-related activity: income support claimants and partners of claimants".

Government Minister Jim Knight explained that "work-related activity" means participation in government run schemes aimed at helping address the barriers to work such as "training, CV writing, help with literacy and numeracy and financial advice".[1]

Labour MP John Grogan succinctly described Lords amendment 2 which was rejected by the commons as effectively raising "from three to five the age that children must attain before their parents are subject to benefits sanction if they are not enthusiastic enough about work-related activity".[2] Mr Grogan rebelled against his Labour Party colleagues and voted to raise the age to five.

The above sentence was to be inserted at the beginning of a new sections "2D" of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 which the Welfare Reform Bill[4] is intended to introduce. At the time of writing the Social Security Administration Act 1992 is not available on the UK Statute Law website. Section 5(2A), (2B) and (2C) of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 were inserted by section 35 of the Welfare Reform Act 2007.

The new section 2D [5] commenced:

  • Regulations may make provision for or in connection with imposing on a person who is entitled to income support a requirement to undertake work-related activity in accordance with regulations as a condition of continuing to be entitled to the full amount of income support payable apart from the regulations. ...

Footnotes:

Debate in Parliament | Source |

Public Whip is run as a free not-for-profit service. If you'd like to support us, please consider switching your (UK) electricity and/or gas to Octopus Energy or tip us via Ko-Fi.

Party Summary

Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.

What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.

What are Boths? An MP can vote both aye and no in the same division. The boths page explains this.

What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.

PartyMajority (Aye)Minority (No)BothTurnout
Con0 157 (+2 tell)082.4%
Independent1 3066.7%
Lab285 (+2 tell) 22088.5%
LDem0 49077.8%
PC0 2066.7%
SNP0 3042.9%
Total:286 236084.7%

Rebel Voters - sorted by party

MPs for which their vote in this division differed from the majority vote of their party. You can see all votes in this division, or every eligible MP who could have voted in this division

Sort by: Name | Constituency | Party | Vote

NameConstituencyPartyVote
Diane AbbottHackney North and Stoke NewingtonLabno
Colin BurgonElmetLabno
Martin CatonGowerLab (minister)no
Katy ClarkNorth Ayrshire and ArranLab (minister)no
Ann ClwydCynon ValleyLab (minister)no
Jeremy CorbynIslington NorthLabno
Jim CousinsNewcastle upon Tyne CentralLab (minister)no
Jon CruddasDagenhamLabno
David DrewStroudLab (minister)no
Paul FarrellyNewcastle-under-LymeLab (minister)no
Paul FlynnNewport WestLab (minister)no
John GroganSelbyLab (minister)no
Kate HoeyVauxhallLab (minister)no
Kelvin HopkinsLuton NorthLab (minister)no
Lynne JonesBirmingham, Selly OakLab (minister)no
Robert Marshall-AndrewsMedwayLabno
John Martin McDonnellHayes and HarlingtonLabno
Gordon PrenticePendleLab (minister)no
Linda RiordanHalifaxLab (minister)no
David TaylorNorth West LeicestershireLab (minister)no
Paul TruswellPudseyLabno
Mike WoodBatley and SpenLabno

About the Project

The Public Whip is a not-for-profit, open source website created in 2003 by Francis Irving and Julian Todd and now run by Bairwell Ltd.

The Whip on the Web

Help keep PublicWhip alive