Labour rebel suggests she is victim of a ‘macho virility test’ after suspension over two-child benefit cap – UK politics live

Rachel Reeves must overhaul the allowance that has resulted in thousands of unpaid carers being saddled with life-changing debt, and in some cases threatened with criminal prosecution, the consumer finance expert Martin Lewis has said.

Lewis has written to the chancellor, identifying four measures that he says are possible to enact without great cost to the taxpayer that would remedy financial injustices, including changes to the child benefit charge and removing withdrawal penalties from lifetime Isas.

In his letter, the founder of MoneySavingExpert also said the low take-up of a 25% government top-up to help with childcare costs was down to its poor branding as “tax-free childcare”.

Lewis said the proposed changes would “improve people’s situations without huge expenditure” and were “sensible non-partisan issues of financial injustice”, many of which had been raised with the previous chancellor, Jeremy Hunt.

The penalisation of unpaid carers who claim benefits for looking after disabled, ill and elderly relatives is an issue highlighted by a long-running Guardian investigation.

The government imposes a strict earnings cap on people who take a job outside their caring responsibilities. Lewis said it was “perverse” that those earning a penny a week more than the £151 threshold lost their entire entitlement to the carer’s allowance, rather than having a taper, as is the case with universal credit.

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Plans to tackle misogyny in schools could take up to 20 years to have an impact on society, the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, has said as she outlined measures to protect women and girls.

Phillips spoke the day after the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) estimated that 2 million women were victims of violence perpetrated by men each year in an epidemic so serious it amounts to a “national emergency”.

One of Labour’s five missions is to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, by targeting perpetrators and addressing the root causes of abuse and violence.

The minister for violence against women and girls said “Raneem’s law” was already in the works, and would ensure police forces provide protection to victims of domestic abuse. But evidence that some of the government’s policies are working – such as addressing misogyny among schoolchildren – could take years to emerge.

She said:

This is a societal problem. The data in the NPCC report speaks for itself. We have been declaring this a national emergency for as long as I can remember, really. This is going to take a long time.

[Look at] prevention education and evidence-based models that cut this type of crime from being learnt – I probably won’t be elected at the point when we can say that metric has worked. Because this about making something that will see benefits in 10 or 20 years’ time.”

Raneem’s law will require police to respond faster to reports of domestic violence and to consider immediate use of orders to protect women. Named after Raneem Oudeh who was killed along with her mother, Khaola Saleem, by Oudeh’s ex-partner in 2018, the legislation would also require every police force to appoint specialist officers in 999 call centres.

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Zarah Sultana has said she “slept well” after being suspended by the Labour party over a Commons rebellion on the two-child benefit cap – and suggested she was the victim of a “macho virility test”.

Sultana, one of seven from the party’s left stripped of the whip on Tuesday night for backing an SNP motion to scrap the cap, said on Wednesday: “I slept well knowing that I took a stand against child poverty that is affecting 4.3 million people in this country and it is the right thing to do and I am glad I did it.”

The former shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the former business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, along with Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain and Sultana, have been suspended.

Keir Starmer faces prime minister’s questions on Wednesday for the first time since entering No 10 amid a backlash over the move.

Sultana said she saw an email on the way home from the vote last night telling her she had had the whip removed. Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, she said:

I look forward to many bills that will be coming forward in this government including nationalising rail, the new deal for working people, but I was also very honest that we should go further, we can make a real difference to people’s lives.

And when you’ve got anti-poverty campaigners, thinktanks, trade unions saying the key driver for child poverty in this country – which is the sixth-largest economy in the world – is the Tories’ two-child benefit cap, then it is a moral imperative on the Labour party to scrap that and do everything that they can to make sure that not a single child has to live in unnecessary hardship and poverty.”

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The Conservatives do not do mergers, party leadership hopeful James Cleverly said when asked what his party should do about Reform.

He was asked about a YouGov survey that showed roughly half of Conservative members were in support of merging with Nigel Farage’s party.

“The Conservative party doesn’t do mergers,” the shadow home secretary told BBC 4’s Today programme. He said:

The simple truth is that we have got a series of principles. We believe in civil liberty, we believe in free enterprise, we believe in the efficient but modest size of the state, lower taxes.”

He added that the Conservative party needs to “expand our base of support”.

James Cleverly has said he thinks the Conservative party is the most successful political movement in human history but that it has recently given the impression of being more focused on internal rows than serving the public.

The shadow home secretary, who was the first to declare he is running for the Tory leadership, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

The party that I have been a member of for many decades has been the most successful political movement, I think, in human history.”

He listed stabilising the economy and supporting Ukraine among the party’s recent achievements.

But we’ve also got to recognise that at this general election those things we have achieved were overshadowed by a number of negatives, so we didn’t get the cut-through for our successes and the criticisms really, really landed.

I think one of the reasons why the criticisms landed, and the good work didn’t get cut-through, is we’d spent too much time rowing amongst ourselves, which gave the impression – the wrong impression – but gave the impression that we were more focused on ourselves than serving the British people. So we have to get out of that habit.”

Cleverly also said he is aware that the US election on 5 November could draw attention away from the Conservative party’s announcement of its new leader on 2 November.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

Of course the American elections will be of interest, but we can’t put our job of being a good and credible opposition and charting the path towards future electoral victories … you can’t put that on hold because of the electoral processes in another country.”

He declined to say whether he would vote for Donald Trump if he was American, after party colleague Suella Braverman said she would.

He called it a “nonsense question” and said:

I’m not an American citizen, so it’s a moot point. It’s not a test of candidates in a British political system to ask them what they would do in a parallel universe where they weren’t British, but were actually American.”

Here are a few of the key events on the politics schedule for this Wednesday:

• Keir Starmer will take part in his first prime minister’s questions (PMQs) at noon amid backbench unease over a vote on the two-child benefit cap that saw him suspend seven Labour MPs.

• Welsh Labour leader nominations close at 12pm. Welsh health secretary, Eluned Morgan, looks set to become the next leader of Welsh Labour, and the country’s first female first minister, after no one else entered the race (so far).

• The Conservative’s leadership nominations open this evening at 7pm. James Cleverly has become the first Tory leadership hopeful to declare his candidacy in the race to replace Rishi Sunak.

Jonathan Ashworth accused the seven Labour MPs suspended for rebelling over the two-child benefit cap of “gesture” politics.

The former Labour MP, who played a prominent role in his party’s election media campaign but was unseated in the general election, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

They knew that this amendment was never going to pass because of the commanding majority Keir Starmer has … They knew there was no chance of this amendment passing.

It was a gesture. That’s not how you change policy. You don’t change policy by gestures, you change policy by engaging with the policymaking structures.”

He continued: “I don’t think any of us should be surprised that Labour MPs who were … not defending the first [Labour] king’s speech for 14 years would lead to this disciplining.”

At midday, Keir Starmer faces the Commons at PMQs for the first time as prime minister. He does so after responding to the first challenge to his authority while in Downing Street by suspending seven MPs.

As reactions go, it was tough, unprecedented and a shock to many as he sent a signal to the left wing of his party, to new MPs and to the opposition about his feelings about rebels.

As Jessica Elgot reports, “the move to suspend MPs from the party’s left, including the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, sent shockwaves through the party and drew criticism from some MPs who voted with the government.”

Starmer’s response was to a rebellion supporting an amendment to scrap the two-child benefit limit amendment. That amendment failed by 363 votes to 103, a majority of 260 for Labour.

The former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Zarah Sultana all voted for the amendment and were suspended from Labour for six months. Forty-two Labour MPs abstained, including Diane Abbott, who said she couldn’t vote for personal reasons but was “horrified” that her allies were suspended.

Sultana is on the morning media round and told the Today programme she had not been warned she would be kicked out of the party if she rebelled but said it wouldn’t have changed how she voted anyhow. “I wasn’t spoken to or informed that would happen,” she said. “But I was always going to vote that way.”

Sultana suggested she was the victim of a “macho virility test”. Asked for her view of the PM, the Coventry South MP said: “I’m not interested in playing up to this macho virility test that seems to be what people are talking about. It’s about the material conditions of 330,000 children living in poverty. This isn’t a game. This is about people’s lives.”

She added: “It’s really important to use every opportunity in parliament to make the case that the two-child cap has to be scrapped. There are 4.3 million children living in the UK in poverty and in my constituency one in three are.”

Asked if Starmer had made an “immoral” decision in choosing not to scrap the two-child benefit cap, Sultana said: “If scrapping the cap is not an urgent priority for a Labour government, then you have to ask what is. Every day it is in place hundreds of thousands of children are enduring unacceptable poverty.”

Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, she said: “When you’ve got anti-poverty campaigners, thinktanks, trade unions saying that the key driver for child poverty in this country – which is the sixth largest economy in the world – is the Tories’ two-child benefit cap, then it is a moral imperative on the Labour party to scrap that and do everything that they can to make sure that not a single child has to live in unnecessary hardship and poverty.”

Removing the cap is backed by the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and Reform. Suella Braverman, who also abstained from voting, told the House on Monday that it had not worked as a measure to stop people having more children. “I believe that the cap is aggravating child poverty, and it is time for it to go,” she said.

Starmer is sure to face further questions over the cap and the rebellion at midday.

Elsewhere overnight, James Cleverly became the first Tory leadership hopeful to declare his candidacy in the race to replace Rishi Sunak and warned his party against “infighting, navel-gazing and the internecine manoeuvrings”.

David Lammy will push to reset the UK-India partnership on his first trip to the country as foreign secretary