TODAY we will be reminded of one of the principal pomp and ceremony events of the Westminster establishment and the British state.
Someone called Black Rod will bang on a door. Various people will busy themselves with medieval weaponry. An MP will ceremoniously be taken hostage. Then finally, we’ll all be told by a King perched on a golden throne what to expect from British democracy in the year ahead.
Welcome to the House of Commons.
But amidst all this pantomime, there is a serious political test to be passed by Sir Keir Starmer and the new Labour Party government.
As SNP MPs, we were all elected on a platform to put the interests of Scotland first and to put the guts into Starmer’s government. In Scotland, the First Minister has rightly vowed to eradicate the scourge that is child poverty.
That’s why the SNP will lay an amendment to the King’s Speech to force the Government to scrap the two-child benefit cap, which will be the starting point in the mission to end child poverty.
READ MORE: 'Still time for Keir Starmer to see sense' and scrap two-child cap, say SNP
Back in 2015 when the Tories introduced the limit as part of their latest austerity Budget, the cap prevented parents from claiming Child Tax Credit or Universal Credit for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017.
To make matters worse, the small print detailed how, in order to receive support for a third child, mothers would have to fill in an eight-page form to prove they had been raped. An utterly abhorrent “rape clause” filed in the depths of the legislation.
For readers of The National, this will have not gone amiss, but since that Budget nine years ago, the SNP led the charge and fought the cap.
Anti-poverty charities have been unanimous in that the two-child limit is driving hundreds of thousands of families into poverty, with the IFS warning that 250,000 children will be impacted by the cap next year, with the total number reaching 670,000 by the end of the next parliament. That’s 26,000 families in Scotland.
But let’s be clear, while this was a nasty Tory Party policy, for every week the two-child benefit cap remains in place, it is another week that the Labour Party take ownership of its impact.
For every media interview where a Labour MP says there’s no money to scrap the cap, it’s another strike on the calendar numbering the days this is a Labour Party policy.
The General Election result made clear people wanted change. The Labour Party stood on a platform of change. If they can’t deliver on this policy – a baby step towards ending child poverty – what real change can be delivered at all?
With an enormous Westminster majority it would be simple for it to be scrapped, but that is ultimately a political choice and how Starmer addresses that choice will determine whether his government passes this first test.
But the test doesn’t lie exclusively with the Prime Minister. Anas Sarwar said the cap should go and our amendment will give him the opportunity to put his money where his mouth is.
READ MORE: Everything you need to know about the King's Speech as parliamentary term
If Scottish Labour want to scrap the cap then it’s simple – he can instruct Scottish Labour MPs to back our amendment.
On July 4, we asked people to vote for what they believe in, and in turn the SNP will put forward our values and demand better on the issues we believe in.
Child poverty is one such issue as it should be for any progressive government, not least the one led by the Labour Party.
And let’s not seriously pretend that by ending the two-child cap we will have achieved anything more than the first, basic step in a long journey.
In Scotland, our SNP government has led these islands in tackling poverty – think of the Scottish Child Payment lifting 100,000 kids out of poverty or the Best Start Grant and Baby Boxes.
Not to mention the millions of pounds spent mitigating Westminster cuts like the Bedroom Tax.
It must be followed by further bold action to eradicate child poverty – including matching the SNP government’s Scottish Child Payment UK-wide, by raising the child element of Universal Credit by £26.70 per child, per week across the UK.
As a new MP, I expected to be exposed to the archaic traditions of Westminster, but allowing children to needlessly be condemned to poverty is one I expected to be left firmly in the Victorian era.
Today the SNP will work constructively to implement real change, we wait to see if the Labour Party will rise to that challenge.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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