Labour has restored the party whip John McDonnell and Apsana Begum 14 months after they lost it for rebelling over the two-child benefit cap, the Guardian understands.
The pair had the whip reinstated after a conversation on Friday with Jonathan Reynolds, who became Labour’s chief whip in a reshuffle earlier this month.
After the decision, Begum said she would “continue to expose the two-child limit at every opportunity”.
“Child poverty is a matter of conscience for me: 44.6% of children in my constituency live in poverty,” she said. “Calls to scrap the policy are growing, from the children’s commissioner to members of the government’s own child-poverty taskforce.”
McDonnell and Begum were among seven MPs to lose the whip in July last year for supporting an amendment to the king’s speech calling for an end to the cap, which has been blamed for a rise in child poverty.
Four of the other MPs suspended at the time, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain and Richard Burgon, had the whip restored in February.
The last of the seven, Zarah Sultana, has cut ties with the party and is attempting to launch a new leftwing party alongside Jeremy Corbyn, who was re-elected in 2024 election as an independent.
Both had been hopeful of having the whip back earlier. Begum was first elected as the MP for Poplar and Limehouse 2019, while McDonnell has held his west London seat of Hayes and Harlington since 1997. He was shadow chancellor throughout Corbyn’s time as leader.
There are still a series of other former Labour MPs who are without the whip. In July, after a widespread rebellion over changes to welfare, Rachael Maskell, Neil Duncan-Jordan, Brian Leishman and Chris Hinchliff were told they had lost the party whip for repeatedly rebelling.
The four MPs had been openly critical of several government policies. Maskell and Duncan-Jordan spearheaded opposition to the cut to the winter fuel allowance and welfare reforms. Hinchliff organised a rebellion over the government’s planning bill, voicing concerns about its effect on nature.
Separately in July, Diane Abbott was suspended for a second time after saying she did not regret her past remarks on racism, which had cost her the whip for a long period in the last parliament.
Abbott had said that people of colour experienced racism “all their lives”, which was different from the “prejudice” experienced by Jewish people, Irish people and Travellers. She was re-suspended for telling the BBC that her comments “were factually correct, as any fair-minded person would accept”.
Begum said on Friday: “It is unconscionable that other colleagues remain suspended for voting with their conscience against cuts to disability benefits, along with the longest-serving black MP Diane Abbott, while others retain the whip, like Lord Mandelson.”
She added: “When I stood for re-election, I said I would continue to stand up for the people of Poplar and Limehouse, championing explicitly anti-imperialist and socialist policies, and driven by a diverse people-powered movement.
“I will continue to do so in this vein no matter what.”
