Welfare Reform and Work Bill — Third Reading — 27 Oct 2015 at 19:00

The majority of MPs voted to support the Welfare Reform and Work Bill at its third reading, allowing it to continue on its path to becoming law.

MPs were considering the Welfare Reform and Work Bill[1]

The Bill provides for:

  • Reducing the household benefit cap from £26,000 to £20,000 (£23,000 in London).
  • Freezing the rate of many major benefits and tax credits for four years; excluding pensioner benefits and many benefits related to disability.
  • Limiting the child element of universal credit to a maximum of two children.
  • Reducing rents in social housing in England by 1% a year for 4 years from April 2016
  • Stopping those on certain benefits being able to claim additional help towards their mortgage payments; replacing the scheme with a loan.
  • Requiring a series of reports to be produced by the Secretary of State on employment, apprenticeships and troubled families.

The motion being debated was:

  • That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Impact on Public Spending on Welfare Benefits

The Bill seeks to implement elements of the summer 2015 budget[3]. The budget document states the working age benefit and tax credit freezes were forecast to save £4 billion a year by 2019. The benefit cap reduction was forecast to save £100m in 2016-17 increasing to £495m in 2020-21. The reduction in social sector rents also reduces the spend on welfare benefits via a saving in Housing Benefit. The changes to tax credits in respect of children were forecast to save £1.3bn by 2020-21.

The Bill also removes the work-related activity component in employment and support allowance and the limited capability for work element in universal credit[2].

==

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
Con317 (+2 tell) 0096.7%
DUP0 6075.0%
Green0 10100.0%
Independent0 20100.0%
Lab0 209 (+2 tell)091.3%
LDem0 5062.5%
PC0 30100.0%
SDLP0 2066.7%
SNP0 550100.0%
UUP0 20100.0%
Total:317 285094.2%

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
no rebellions

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