LABOUR have suspended a number of MPs just weeks after the General Election for voting against the Government – for backing calls to scrap the two-child benefit cap limit.
Seven MPs in total, including former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, have had the party whip suspended for voting against the Government on Tuesday night.
Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussein, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Zarah Sultana are all understood to have been suspended.
The National understands they were told by the chief whip they would be suspended for six months and their membership of the Parliamentary Labour Party will be reviewed after this period.
They could be re-admitted to the party in January.
It comes after Keir Starmer (below) saw off an SNP bid to axe the two-child cap, with almost all his MPs voting to keep the policy.
The vote was a remarkable demonstration of the reversal of Labour’s position on the two-child cap, which they had previously opposed.
All Scottish Labour MPs, bar Katrina Murray for whom no vote was recorded, voted to keep the cap.
Analysis suggests that scrapping the policy would lift 250,000 children out of poverty at a cost of between £1.3 billion and £2.5bn. Save the Children have said axing the two-child policy was the “the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty”.
