Downing Street has “listened” and “honoured” the promises it made on changes to the welfare bill, one of the key rebels, Meg Hillier, has said, saying she would vote for the bill on Tuesday.
The Treasury select committee chair, who authored the original amendment that would have killed off the government’s flagship welfare changes, offered her support amid a continued backlash over the bill from dozens of MPs.
Hillier suggested she disagreed with the work and pensions select committee chair, Debbie Abrahams, who said on Monday that the government had not held up its side of the bargain over the timing of a promised review into disability benefits, co-produced with disabled people.
“I’ve not always been happy about how No 10 has engaged with MPs in general, but on this they acted in good faith: listened, made an offer and honoured it,” Hillier said, confirming she would vote for the bill.
She said the key concession that had been secured was that no current claimant would be affected by the changes to universal credit and personal independence payments (Pip). “The key issue is that over 300,000 disabled people have ongoing support and are less worried about their future. That’s good for them and the right thing to do,” she said.
Hillier will not proceed with her amendment, which was signed by 126 Labour MPs before the government was forced to back down.
A second amendment rejecting the bill has been put forward by another Labour MP, Rachael Maskell, written with the backing of 138 disability groups.
The amendment has been signed by 39 Labour MPs with dozens more expected to abstain. The rebellion is likely to fall short of the 83 which would be needed to defeat the government, though about 50 MPs are still expected to vote against the bill.
Maskell said the number signing the amendment would be smaller than those voting against. “I engaged with so many people yesterday that were saying: ‘I’m not signing the recent amendment but I am voting down the bill,’” she told BBC Breakfast.
On Monday, 86 disability and human rights groups put out a joint statement urging MPs to vote down the bill despite the protections for existing claimants, including Scope, Mind, the Trussell Trust, Sense, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Oxfam.
The business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said on Tuesday that it was right to start moving on the reforms rather than wait for the review. “I think making sure that you are doing changes that are future-facing, not changing people’s existing entitlement, is quite a sound set of principles,” he told Sky News.
“There’s an urgency for reform. If people think governments will dodge difficult issues, spend a lot of money even on outcomes they don’t think are very good and the public don’t support, and if that chance to reform the system is seen to have been lost entirely, that undermines public support.”
Alongside the promise that the changes would only apply to new claimants, the government promised a review led by the welfare minister, Stephen Timms, as a co-production with disability groups into the criteria used to assess people for Pip.
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But the terms of reference from the review made clear that there would still be a higher bar for obtaining Pip – new claimants would need a high score of four in at least one of the categories for assessment in order to qualify. However, the review will look again at what abilities and conditions might meet certain scores.
Abrahams said the terms of the review meant it was impossibly constrained, and on that basis she would vote against the bill.
The timing of the review is also a cause for concern. It will report in autumn 2026 – the same time that the Pip changes are scheduled to take effect – which MPs said risked a “three-tier” system, which would include claimants assessed pre- and post-Timms review.
Ministers are understood to have stressed to MPs that the review could report sooner – but the timing was in the hands of the disability groups involved in the review.
Speaking in the chamber on Monday, a number of other MPs who had signed an amendment opposing the bill also said they remained concerned, including Vicky Foxcroft, Sarah Owen, Marie Tidball, Yuan Yang, Derek Twigg and Chi Onwurah.