A SCOTTISH Labour MP has claimed that tackling child poverty is in the party’s “DNA” – despite voting to keep the two-child benefit cap.
Former director of the Better Together campaign and MP for East Renfrewshire Blair McDougall appeared on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme on Wednesday.
It comes after Keir Starmer (below) suspended seven Labour MPs for backing an SNP amendment to scrap the two-child benefit cap limit as Stephen Flynn said the UK Government “must take ownership of the damage it is causing”.
Asked if he was “embarrassed voting to condemn children to poverty” by host Gary Robertson, McDougall replied that MPs had voted for a King’s Speech which would do an “enormous amount” to help those living in poverty.
“We voted against an amendment that criticised the Government for not having lifted the two-child cap after just 18 days,” he said.
“We were always clear that this is something that we want to do, lifting kids out of poverty is what Labour governments do. It’s in our DNA.
“But we were also very clear in the election and very clear last night that that has to be paid for somehow and we know that the public finances are an absolute mess, that’s what we’ve been left by the Tories.”
He added that scrapping the cap was therefore a question about public finances before Labour could start to do the things they would like, including lifting the two-child cap.
Starmer had come under increasing pressure to scrap the Tory measure with former prime minister Gordon Brown among those to hit out at the “inequities” of the policy.
McDougall continued to say that everyone in Labour wanted to lift the cap but refused to put a timeframe on when this might happen.
He said: “The King’s Speech contained measures to, for example, raise the minimum wage to the level of the living wage to deal with exploitative employment practices like zero-hours contracts, to deal with fuel poverty.
“And so there’s a huge amount in there about getting on with the job of lifting kids out of poverty immediately.
“As I say the question of the two-child cap is one of affordability. I think everybody in the Labour Party is making the same argument which is that this is something that we want to do but you know we’re not sitting about in the meantime.”
McDougall was then pressed on whether or not he would vote in line with Scottish Labour’s policies, given that Anas Sarwar has previously called for the cap to be ditched.
The MP replied that “everybody in Scottish Labour supports getting rid of the two-child cap” and again pointed to the question of the finances available.
Asked explicitly if he would vote based on Scottish Labour policy or UK Labour, he said he did not think there was a difference in policy north and south of the Border and claimed the position on the issue was “identical”.
He further added however that Labour need to be a “little bit more ambitious when it comes to child poverty”.
