Scottish Labor MP denies party split over two-child cap

A Scottish Labor MP has denied there is a split with the UK party over the two-child benefit cap after.

Blair McDougall said the parties had an “identical” stance on the controversial policy.

An SNP amendment to the King’s Speech calling for it to be scrapped was defeated by 363 votes to 103 in the Commons.

Of Scottish Labour’s 37 MPs, 36 voted against, while one – Katrina Murray – did not record a vote.

Scottish Labor leader Anas Sarwar has previously called for an end to the cap, which prevents most parents from claiming universal credit or child tax credit for a third child.

Seven rebel Labor MPs had the whip suspended for six months after voting against the government.

Mr McDougall denied Scottish and UK Labor had a different view on the issue.

“I think what ministers have said to me this week on the two-child cap is identical to what people in the Scottish Labor Party are saying,” he told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland.

“The position is absolutely identical.”

The East Renfrewshire MP said policies included in the King’s Speech would help working families get out of poverty, pointing to commitments to increase the minimum wage and improve workers’ rights.

“We voted for a King’s Speech which will do an enormous amount to lift children and other people out of poverty and we voted against an amendment that criticized the government for not having lifted the two-child cap after just 18 days,” he said.

Mr McDougall said the two-child cap was having a “huge impact” on people and that he expected it to be abolished “as quickly as possible”.

However, he said the move had to paid for “somehow”, and that public finances had been left in an “absolute mess” by the former Conservative government.

He added: “Lifting kids out of poverty is what Labor governments do. It’s in our DNA.”

Mr Sarwar has described the cap as “heinous” and said he would push Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to scrap it.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Radio 4’s Today program that the policy is “condemning children to poverty”.

The Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland reported that abolishing the cap, which it estimated would cost £1.3bn a year, would lift 250,000 children in the UK out of poverty, including up to 15,000 in Scotland.

Introduced by the Conservative government in 2017, it has already affected over 80,000 children in Scotland and 1.5m across the UK.

SNP MP Stephen Gethins described the cap as a “great driver of poverty” and called for Labor to “put their money where their mouth is”.

“I think it’s really to give working families a fair deal, to also take children out of poverty,” he told Good Morning Scotland.

“We know that helps in public purse further down the line.”

Although the cap falls under powers reserved to Westminster, the Scottish government has been eager to mitigate its impact north of the border.

Mr Gethins said the Scottish government spent £140m per year mitigating UK government policies and that paying to mitigate the two-child cap would mean diverting spending away from public services in Scotland such as the NHS or education.

He added: “I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect an incoming Labor government to do some of the heavy lifting.”