Ian Murray has admitted his mum was “probably” affected by Labour’s winter fuel payment cut.
But the Scottish Secretary said his mother “saw it as a bonus” – so has not been giving him a hard time about it.
The Edinburgh South MP also refused to say whether he had been pushing to scrap the two-child benefit cap as part of Labour’s child poverty taskforce.
When asked by the Record if his mum missed out on the winter fuel payment, Murray said: “Probably, yeah. I would have thought so.”
When asked if she had been giving him a hard time, Murray said: “My mum is probably one of the people that saw it as a bonus rather than a necessity, I would have thought. So I’ve not had any jip from my mum about it, no.”
The Labour Government announced it was scrapping the universal winter fuel payment just weeks after it won July’s general election.
This winter it was only available to people on Pension Credit. But the Scottish Government has since said it will reinstate a universal benefit – although at a lower rate – next winter. Scottish Labour said it would do the same.
Murray is part of the Labour Government’s child poverty task force, which will publish its strategy in the spring.
When asked if he had been pushing for the scrapping of the two child benefit cap being part of the strategy, he said: “We’ve been trying to stay away from a discussion at child poverty task force about individual components of the universal credit system.
“Because what the task force was trying to do is to say what is child poverty? How do we how do we properly measure it? What are the things that contribute to it? What are the things that pull people out of poverty permanently? And what do we do across government to try and deliver some of that stuff?
“Our starting point is that Labour governments always pull people out of poverty, particularly children, and that’s your starting point, and we’re going to do that again, because we have to do that again, then that’s an entirely different conversation than what we do about the Universal Credit system.
“The welfare and benefits part of that is critical, but what is actually the most difficult bits to resolve are the housing, health inequalities, the educational opportunities and those bits, which is what they’re focussing on.”
He said that “one of the key ways you can affect child poverty is to help the second earner in the family to earn more.” He added: “All this stuff’s been really interesting to see how it all works, so that’s why we haven’t concentrated on the individual parts of the benefits system.”
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