Keir Starmer could pour money into tackling child poverty and row back on winter fuel payment cuts as he seeks to see off a Labour rebellion on benefits.
The two-child cap on handouts is said to be among measures that could be tweaked as the PM and Chancellor Rachel Reeves try to appease furious party backbenchers.
Scores of MPs are preparing to refuse to back plans to make it harder for people to claim disability payments next month that will save the Treasury £5bn and which they hope will get tens of thousands back into work.
Sources told the Sunday Times that changes to means-testing of the £300 winter fuel payment for pensioners, announced in the Budget, was also being ‘discussed’.
Rebels believe as many as 170 Labour MPs could avoid voting for the disability benefit cuts, though around 100 will abstain rather than vote against it, a move that could see them lose the Labour whip.
More than 100 backbenchers are said to have put their names to a private letter to No10 saying raising concerns about the plan to cut disability benefits.
They are said to be unhappy about the fact that the full impact of the cuts will not be revealed until after the vote in June.
Meanwhile Ms Reeves is even under pressure from her own local Labour party branch to abandons her plans to cut disability benefits.
The two-child cap on handouts is said to be among measures that could be tweaked as the PM and Chancellor Rachel Reeves try to appease furious party backbenchers.
Rebels believe as many as 170 Labour MPs could avoid voting for the disability benefit cuts, though around 100 will abstain rather than vote against it, a move that could see them lose the Labour whip.
The Leeds West and Pudsey Constituency Labour Party (CLP), which campaigned to return Ms Reeves to Parliament in the general election as its local MP, has agreed to write to her ‘as soon as possible’ to make clear it does not support the cuts.
The local party branch passed a motion opposing the cuts when it met this week.
The Government’s plans, set out in a Green Paper earlier this year, would tighten the eligibility criteria for the main disability benefit in England, the personal independence payment (Pip).
Restricting Pip would cut benefits for around 800,000 people, while the sickness-related element of universal credit also set to be cut.
The package of measures are aimed at reducing the number of working-age people on sickness benefits, which grew during the pandemic and has remained high since.
The Government hopes the proposals can save £5 billion a year by the end of the decade.
In its motion opposing the plans, the Leeds West and Pudsey CLP said disabled people ‘are not responsible for the state of the national finances and should not be made to pay the price for Tory economic mismanagement’.
Ms Reeves last week told broadcasters that even Labour backbenchers knew that the system inherited from the Tories was not working.
‘They know that the system needs reform. We do need to reform how the welfare system works if we’re going to grow our economy,’ she said.
‘But crucially, if we’re going to lift people out of poverty and give more people the chance to fulfil their potential, the focus has got to be on supporting people into work.
