Keir Starmer has tried to stave off a revolt on the two-child benefit cap by announcing a child poverty taskforce. The Prime Minister told the Commons that the taskforce would ‘devise a strategy to drive the numbers down’, and that it would not just focus on one policy area. He was responding to an intervention on his King’s Speech address to the Commons from one of his own backbenchers, Sarah Owen, who asked him for assurances that he ‘personally takes this issue very seriously’. It was the first intervention on Starmer’s speech, and underlined the strength of feeling on the Labour benches, let alone across the House of Commons, about the government’s failure to scrap the benefit cap in today’s Speech.
Owen didn’t look very convinced by the answer. Her colleague Kim Johnson can now table her amendment to the Speech, which a number of Labour MPs have indicated they are keen to support. The SNP leader Stephen Flynn also intervened almost immediately after to prod Starmer on the importance of scrapping the cap. SNP or not, it will be an awkward row for Labour to continue to have with itself, and I suspect that the taskforce is not the last measure that the Prime Minister will have to resort to in order to stop it becoming a dominating row. MPs often respond well to a ‘roadmap’ towards something, and given Starmer and Rachel Reeves have already said they want to scrap the cap when the public finances allow, they may need to offer an idea of how long that journey is going to be before they can do that.
Once the formalities of his speech were over, Starmer told the Chamber that ‘the great test of our times’ is ‘the fight for trust’. To that end, he focused the early passages of his speech on public sector reform and keeping promises. He mentioned first the pieces of legislation that the government is taking forward from the last parliament, including on football governance, smoking, the Holocaust Memorial and Martyn’s Law.
He then pointed out the legislation on the duty of candour on public sector workers, arguing that ‘a government of service must also be a government of accountability and justice: that is what service means’. He repeatedly attacked the Conservatives for their own performance in government, talking about ‘Tory irresponsibility’ and ‘a dumping of the hard choices’. This government was closing the door on that, he argued. It will therefore be fascinating to see when he announces reform to social care.
Starmer promised the Labour government would ‘take the brakes off, go further and faster on measures to generate higher economic growth’. He listed the planning reforms, the creation of an industrial strategy, reforms to public transport and skills and devolution as evidence that he was getting going right away with his ‘national renewal’. What is also getting going, though, is the sound of discontent on his backbenches.
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