george osborne has urged progressive mps in the labour party to back his welfare changes in a critical commons vote on monday night, saying they should recognise that the proposals not only chime with the public but build on mainstream labour thinking.  writing in the guardian, the chancellor calls on labour to stop blaming the public for its defeat and recognise that welfare requires public consent.  labour has plunged into a deep, week-long split over how to respond to osborne’s welfare plans, with at least three of the leadership candidates, including andy burnham and yvette cooper, rejecting the interim labour leader harriet harman’s plea for the party to abstain and back a lower welfare cap. harman also said labour should not oppose the restriction of tax credits to a claimant’s first two children.  she said the party needed to recognise that the electorate had sent labour a message on welfare and it had to show it was listening. but she has now been forced into a partial retreat, and the party has instead tabled an amendment rejecting the bill. some labour mps still believe the new compromise does not go far enough and will vote against the bill on monday, not just support a dissenting amendment.  osborne sprung a surprise in the budget by proposing cuts to the level of tax credits, but balanced these in part by a rise in the minimum wage to more than £9 an hour by 2020 for those over 25. osborne argues that the responsibility for ensuring decent living standards should be rebalanced from the state handing out subsidies towards employers providing decent wages.  he writes: “three in four people – and a majority of labour voters – think that britain spends too much on welfare. for our social contract to work, we need to retain the consent of the taxpayer, not just the welfare recipient. for those that can work, i believe it is better to earn a higher income from your work than receive a higher income from welfare.  “i thought british politics had taken a step forward when labour’s acting leader harriet harman indicated that she would support at least some of our reforms. she recognised that oppositions only advance when they stop blaming the public for their defeat and recognise that some of the arguments made by political opponents should be listened to – just as a previous conservative opposition realised 15 years ago when it accepted the case for a minimum wage.  “depressingly, the labour leader has been forced to retreat from her sensible position after len mccluskey accused her of ‘running up the white flag’ and leadership candidates andy burnham and yvette cooper joined jeremy corbyn in undermining her. with the vote coming on monday, i urge moderate labour mps not to make the same mistake as in the last parliament, when they refused to support each and every welfare reform we proposed. i say: vote with us.”  helen goodman mp, who tabled an amendment to block the welfare bill without consent from the party’s leadership, told the today programme on monday that she hoped the labour leadership hopefuls would vote against the bill if harman’s motion didn’t succeed.  “having pointed out what’s wrong with the bill it seems to me only logical, if her motion doesn’t succeed ... that we vote against the bill in its entirety.”  goodman rejected osborne’s claim that labour voters had supported the government’s proposed welfare cuts.    “i don’t think george osborne is quite right about this,” she said. “throughout the election campaign the tories refused to say where their £12bn worth of cuts were going to come from. they did that precisely because they had these ideas in the back of their mind and they knew they would be deeply unpopular with the british people, and that they would lose votes if they revealed them.”  osborne insisted his stance represented the new centre ground of politics and called on progressive mps to join the conservatives in the lobby.    he said: “because we’re requiring all employers by law to pay the national living wage, we can rein in the tax credit system that has subsidised low wages for too long.”  the proposals are part of a common endeavour by labour and the conservatives to implement difficult welfare reforms, he says.  osborne adds: “to their credit, new labour work and pensions secretaries such as john hutton, david blunkett and james purnell all tried to reform the welfare system. now alistair darling says tax credits are ‘subsidising lower wages in a way that was never intended’. and frank field, elected by all mps to be the new chair of the work and pensions committee, agrees the system as it stands is simply ‘not sustainable’ and the budget represents a ‘game-changer’. that’s because, working closely with my colleague iain duncan smith, those long-held aspirations for genuine welfare reform are being delivered.”  he points out that blunkett had described the previous welfare system as “crackers”. the tax credit system had become unsustainable, osborne said, adding: “it can’t be right that a tax credits system gordon brown said would cost just over £1bn in its first year ended up costing £30bn, with payments being made to nine in every 10 families with children.”  osborne’s warning to labour not to forget the principle of taxpayer consent came as the party’s leadership candidates continued to scrap over how to respond to the welfare changes.  speaking on the bbc’s sunday politics, which hosted a debate between the candidates, burnham explained why he led the revolt over harman’s plan not to oppose the government’s welfare bill: “i believe tax credits are one of the biggest and best things we did, because they support people in work and get people into work. the problem with george osborne’s budget is it diminished those work incentives and it isn’t going to do what he claims he is doing.”  liz kendall, who has been described as the blairite candidate, challenged burnham and cooper to explain how their stance on welfare differed from the one that helped labour lose the election.  burnham said he supported the principle of a benefits cap, and cooper said she backed a universal childcare system. she said: “that’s what we should be doing. that would help far more people into work.”  the labour manifesto had contained backing for a welfare cap, but plans for a universal childcare system were blocked by ed miliband largely on grounds of cost.  kendall said: “i don’t want to see child tax credits cut from poor and low-paid families. but i thought that harriet harman was right to say to us as a party that we’ve lost the election and one of the big reasons why was people didn’t trust us on welfare. and if we keep saying and doing the things we’ve done over the past five years over the next five years, we will get the same result. so i want to support and back harriet for raising a very difficult issue for us as a party.”
george osborne calls on labour mps to back welfare changes in commons vote