Seven Labour MPs have had the whip suspended for six months after voting against the government on an amendment to scrap the two-child benefit cap.
Ex-shadow chancellor John McDonnell was among the Labour MPs who voted for an SNP motion calling for an end to the policy, which prevents almost all parents from claiming Universal Credit or child tax credit for more than two children.
Mr McDonnell backed the SNP motion alongside Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Imran Hussain, Apsana Begum and Zarah Sultana.
MPs rejected the SNP amendment by 363 votes to 103, in the first major test of the new Labour government’s authority.
Losing the whip means the MPs are suspended from the parliamentary party and will now sit as independent MPs.
Nearly all of the rebels were allies of the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who now sits as an independent MP and put his name to the SNP motion.
In a statement on social media, Ms Sultana said she would “always stand up for the most vulnerable in our society”, adding that scrapping the cap would “lift 33,000 children out of poverty”.
Al Shifa Hospital after a two-week Israeli siege, April 2024.
Gaza’s hospitals, already overwhelmed, are struggling with an influx of casualties following brutal attacks on refugee camps. Sugary drinks have become the most affordable food as aid delivery obstructions persist
Brutal attacks by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have, yet again, intensified pressure on the few functional hospitals in the Gaza Strip. Health workers at Nasser Medical Complex reported harrowing scenes following attacks on Khan Younis on July 13, where they received over 100 new casualties despite the hospital already operating over capacity.
“At one point, you had people in the hallway moaning in pain,” said Amy Kit-Mei Low, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) project medical referent. “Even though they had [wound] dressings, the dressings were oozing blood. […] the hospital was trying to cope, but it can barely cope with normal cases.”
UNRWA representative Scott Anderson described the scene at the hospital, stressing the lack of beds, disinfectants, and electricity to run ventilation at Nasser. “I saw toddlers who are double amputees, children paralyzed and unable to receive treatment, and others separated from their parents. I also saw mothers and fathers who were unsure if their children were alive,” Anderson said.
In addition to the relentless IOF attacks, including those targeting healthcare facilities that have killed 2.5% of Gaza’s health workforce since October 7, hospitals are also struggling with aid delivery restrictions imposed by Israel. Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, and especially since the beginning of May, the flow of essential goods to hospitals has been drastically reduced. Hospitals are particularly burdened by the ban on certain medications, including anesthetics, strong painkillers, and even diabetes drugs. Recently, a consortium of organizations providing health care in Gaza warned of a shortage of antibiotics safe for pregnant and breastfeeding women due to the blockade.
Despite having hundreds of kilos of aid ready for dispatch, supplies are blocked from reaching hospitals and health centers. The blockade is reinforcing severe food shortages, exacerbating the health crisis. Reports indicate that Israel prioritizes commercial trucks over humanitarian ones at crossings, leaving people with limited and extremely expensive food options. The same consortium of organizations reported that sugary drinks are currently the most affordable food in Gaza.
Famine is spreading rapidly across all regions of Gaza. Nearly 10,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women are on the verge of famine, and 7,000 are already living in famine conditions, according to the United Nations. As a result, more babies are being born preterm and underweight.
For older children, mental health persists as a critical issue. The Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP) recently estimated that half a million children in Gaza require mental health support. Displaced families report that children are struggling with bedwetting, continuous shaking, violent outbursts, and likely PTSD due to living under constant attack.
GCMHP warns that mental health is also deteriorating among adults, as needs in Gaza far exceed available services. Many people are becoming emotionally numb as a consequence of not being able to receive any mental health support, and are disillusioned by the international community’s failure to halt the genocide perpetrated by Israel. GCMHP teams have encountered people in a state of emotional stagnation, recounting the loss of entire families as if it were a routine event. While scaling up mental health services is crucial for addressing this, GCMHP and other organizations insist that this will not be enough without a ceasefire.
People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.
Zionist Keir ‘Kid Starver’ Starmer. Image thanks to The Skwawkbox.
Capital Gains Tax is paid at a lower rate than Income Tax so that unearned income is taxed less than earned income: rich people who don’t even have to watch it coming in are taxed less than the hard-working families that we hear so much about. The Green Party argues that hundreds of thousands of children can be lifted out of poverty if Labour committed to equalising capital gains tax to pay to scrap the two-child benefit cap. The four newly elected Green MPs, will be proposing a reasoned amendment to the King’s Speech that includes the scrapping of the two-child benefit.
The IFS estimates that the cap will impact 2.63 million children by the end of this parliament and that scrapping the cap would cost in the region of £3.4billion – before taking into account the wider economic impact of poverty on health and welfare systems. In their recent manifesto, the Green Party estimated that making Capital Gains Tax fairer could raise £16bn, a move that would impact less than 2% of income taxpayers. This £16bn figure is supported by research conducted by Arun Advani, a tax expert at the University of Warwick, who estimated that equalising CGT and income tax rates would raise £16.7bn a year.
Green MPs will today propose an amendment to propose the government scraps the two-child benefit cap. Green Party Co-Leader and Bristol Central MP Carla Denyer, speaking on behalf of the Green group of MPs said
“I think Labour are serious when they say they want to change the country. But the change they are looking to achieve will always be hamstrung for as long as they limit their own potential to raise additional revenue to spend on frontline services. The impact of this approach is already clear. Every day we have children going hungry, unable to concentrate in school or struggling to ascertain even the very basics – this is the real world impact of child poverty. And so today we’re offering Labour a positive fairer taxation that will allow them to redistribute money from some of the wealthiest to some of the very poorest. This is a political choice that they must now make.”
Green Party Work, Employment and Social Security Spokesperson, Prof Catherine Rowett said, “Scrapping the two-child benefit cap is a moral and practical imperative. It is a matter of social, economic and racial justice. Today we have outlined one way that Labour, if they had the political will, could choose to help millions of children. And child poverty blights lives and costs millions, as generations of children are condemned to lower achievement and a lifetime of poor health. When they say there is no money, remember this is a political choice – they’re ignoring the political, social and economic costs of keeping children in poverty.”
Fatma Hijazi, the mother of 10-year-old Palestinian boy Mustafa Hijazi, who died due to malnutrition and lack of medication, holds the lifeless body of her child in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on June 14, 2024. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The starvation of Palestinians in Gaza “is a form of genocidal violence,” said 10 rights experts.
While the United Nations still has not formally declared a famine in Gaza after nine months of Israel’s near-total blockade on humanitarian aid, 10 top U.N. experts on Tuesday said they have seen enough.
“We declare that Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” said the experts.
Michael Fakhri, special rapporteur on the right to food, was joined in the statement by other experts including Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, and Paula Gaviria Betancur, special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons.
They said the recent deaths of three children in various parts of the enclave led the experts, who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations as a whole, to declare a famine has taken hold.
“Fayez Ataya, who was barely six months old, died on May 30, 2024 and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi died on June 1, 2024 at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah,” said the experts. “Nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died on June 3, 2024 in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis. All three children died from malnutrition and lack of access to adequate healthcare.”
“With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” they continued.
We are now seeing famine across the whole of Gaza. All houses destroyed, food systems destroyed and healthcare destroyed. And kids are dying. Is there any humanity left? https://t.co/jjI5ZHAvbA
— UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing (@adequatehousing) July 9, 2024
At least 34 Palestinians in Gaza—the majority being children—have now died from malnutrition since October, when Israel began its bombardment of the enclave in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced there would “be no electricity, no food, no fuel” allowed in to Gaza.
Israeli officials said in response to Tuesday’s statement that it has increased the aid allowed into Gaza recently, but hundreds of delivery trucks remain stranded in Egypt and a floating pier built by the U.S. has not significantly improved the humanitarian crisis.
The U.N. experts said that with the first death of a child from malnutrition and dehydration, it should have been considered “irrefutable that famine has taken hold.”
“When a two-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on February 24 and March 4, respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza,” they said. “The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths… Inaction is complicity.”
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which is backed by the U.N., said last month that Gaza is at high risk for famine and that nearly half a million people were facing “catastrophic” food insecurity, with an extreme lack of food.
In May, Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier, who had previously hesitated to say Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, said Israel’s “sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory” ultimately convinced him that Israeli officials are “engaged in genocide.”
In March, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to ensure its military refrain from violating the Genocide Convention by preventing humanitarian aid from reaching people in Gaza, saying that “the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have deteriorated further” and that “famine is setting in.”
A woman named Ghaneyma Joma told Reuters on Monday at a hospital in Khan Younis that she feared her son would soon die of starvation.
“It’s distressing to see my child… lying there dying from malnutrition because I cannot provide him with anything due to the war, the closing of crossings, and the contaminated water,” she told the outlet.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on the U.S. government, the biggest international funder of Israel’s military and a persistent defender of its actions in Gaza, to ensure that a cease-fire agreement is reached and that Palestinians receive necessary humanitarian aid.
“The intentional starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza can only occur with the active complicity of the Biden administration in Israel’s campaign of genocide,” said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the group. “This complicity must end, and the Palestinian people must be offered a future in which they are free of occupation and can live in dignity.”
Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Democracy is a precious, and essential part of our society. Our leadership must always be accountable to the people, and if they are not, we risk oppression. We are, without a doubt, lucky to live in a liberal representational democracy, and when the time comes to vote, we should. So why then, are people acting politically, with civil resistance, outside of this mechanism?
Over the last twelve months, thousands of people in the UK have engaged in peaceful resistance, and over a hundred (and counting) have been imprisoned. It’s not just in this country, in Canada ‘Save Old Growth’ are blocking motorways demanding no more felling of ancient trees. In France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Norway, the USA and Australia, ordinary people are resisting, disrupting transport and cultural activities – demanding that their states act to protect, not destroy, life.
They are ordinary people – coming together and acting out of love as much as fear and grief. Engaging in civil resistance, and defying a state, that while democratically elected, has proved deeply harmful. There’s no denying this harm – while the International Energy Agency has made it clear we can have no more new oil and gas development, the UK Government is ready to approve new oil fields and issue new exploration licenses, a death sentence for millions.
Our politicians say they are ‘committed to reaching net zero’. What they are actually committed to is kicking the can down the road and round the corner. Gambling on unproven or non-existent technology to reverse our dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Instead of taking action, they’re making the problem worse for another 30 years, literally pouring fuel on the fire. The UK is the home of BP and Shell who are making eye-watering profits, and enjoying tax breaks to destroy life – because “pensions”, because “jobs”, because “economic growth”.
A stable climate is not a competing policy demand to be set against pensions, transport, or public sector funding. One provides the basis for everything else, there simply isn’t a contest. Our predicament is almost comically simple – either we stop the destruction of the global systems that enable ordered civil society to work or we lose everything we value, our traditions, our cherished landscapes and, crucially, democracy. There are no free and fair elections on a burning earth.
In 2019 the MoD published a report outlining what is coming if we don’t immediately reduce carbon emissions – “increased conflict over diminishing natural resources”. That’s code for war. War over food and water – and we know what war looks like, flattened cities, dictator warlords, child traffickers waiting on borders, tortured grandfathers – it’s being documented once again in Europe.
So what has happened in the UK to protect against this future? Traffic on the M25 has been disrupted, London bridges closed, oil terminals have been blockaded and occupied, football matches interrupted. Inept radio hosts have sparked viral memes about growing concrete and inspired themed stag nights. Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, XR and Stop HS2 have been painted on both the Left and Right as an eco-mob, eco-fascists, as selfish, naive and childish. But perhaps the most damaging criticism is that they are anti-democratic.
It’s as if every right and freedom we enjoy has been handed to us by a benign government. As if the Suffragettes never smashed windows, as if the race riots never happened, as if Stonewall simply wrote letters, as if those demanding disability rights didn’t chain themselves to railings and buses, as if the poll tax was scrapped due to reasonable debate and discussion or waiting politely for a chance to vote. Change requires citizens to stand up and resist harmful governments, it is part of democracy.
Resistance has nothing to do with “protest”. Protest is when you express your disapproval. You do not express disapproval when murderous governments engage in an act condemning the world to go over 1.5C in the 2030s – a death sentence for small island states and millions in the global south. Pakistan today demonstrates what we face – 33 million people impacted by floods and agriculture decimated.
We know what to do. It’s what the Suffragettes did, it’s what the Civil Rights movements did, it’s what everyone does when the inalienable right to life and a livelihood are violated. We engage in non-violent civil resistance.
What we must do now is block and disable the cogs of the machine. This is not a “tactic” – it is an act of self respect, an act of solidarity, an act of love and necessity.
We must resist now or we will look back with longing at all we have lost. The last 250 years of sacrifice and tears expended by generations to create decent societies is about to be snuffed out in the blink of an eye. The word betrayal does not cover the reality of what is going on. All our traditions, all our values, all that we claim to stand for is about to be lost.
It’s not about winning. It’s about doing what has to be done. Those who fought fascism in the 20th century, those who are fighting the oil companies across the global south, those fighting the Russians in Ukraine, they act because they know someone has to stand up.
The next generations are watching us. Can you feel the weight of billions of children yet to take their first breath? They are saying “Are you mad? Get out there, and stop this – or you condemn us forever”.
dizzy: 1. I submit that we exist in a plutocracy rather than a democracy. 2. I couldn’t find the MoD article containing the quotation “increased conflict over diminishing natural resources”. I suspect that it existed but is no longer published openly. There are plenty of official reports making similar points and it is a reasonable statement. For example the WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2011, ‘Resource Scarcity, Climate Change and the Risk of Violent Conflict’ Alex Evans, Center on International Cooperation, New York University, September 9, 2010 makes similar claims. Edit: Despite that article being a very wooly academic paper, I think that it does make that claim
Although the conflict risk posed by climate change and resource scarcity will almost always be better understood as a ‘threat multiplier’ than as a sole cause of violent conflict, a range of potential linkages between climate, scarcity and conflict risk can nonetheless be identified, whether through intensifying existing problems, or through creating new environmental problems that lead to instability.
USAID (2009). Climate Change, Adaptation and Conflict: A preliminary review of the issues. CMD Discussion Paper no. 1, October 2009
