MORE Labour MPs voiced opposition to government welfare cuts yesterday as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer faces the biggest rebellion of his premiership.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is facing pressure to find the money to ditch austerity policies in her spending review next month, with more than 150 MPs said to be preparing to vote against his forthcoming benefit cuts.

Campaigning Labour backbencher for Walthamstow Stella Creasy became the latest yesterday to call for the two-child benefit cap to be scrapped, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that lifting the limit would take “350,000 children out of poverty overnight.”

She said: “It’s worth reflecting on the fact that 60 per cent of those kids are in households where somebody is in work.”

The government’s child-poverty strategy, which was due to be published in the spring, is now set to come in the autumn so it can be aligned with the Chancellor’s Budget.

Ms Creasy said: “What really matters is that child poverty strategy, because none of us want to be dependent on the welfare system as a way of helping every family make ends meet.

“And I am painfully aware of how many people in my local community still have too much month at the end of their money.”

The policy means parents only receive support for up to two children through the universal credit system.

Asked whether she would focus on scrapping the policy or reverse winter fuel allowance for pensioners, she said that her focus is ”poverty... I think we need a triple lock for families too.

She added that ”there is a case for some really difficult but important political arguing” over reversing the Tory government’s decision to cut National Insurance rates.

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell MP told the Morning Star: ”There are 14 million people living in poverty, including four million children and a million pensioners.

”Any Labour government worthy of the name would be redistributing wealth to tackle this grotesque level of poverty rather than forcing more people into poverty and hardship.”

The MP, who remains suspended from Labour for voting to scrap the two-child cap, added: ”We do not want any half measures.

”Now is the time to reverse the winter fuel allowance cut in full, scrap the two-child limit and halt the threatened cuts to disability benefits.”

A spokeswoman for Momentum said: ”Reeves’s decision to continue Tory austerity, cutting winter fuel payments, continuing the two child benefit cap, and proposing billions of pounds of welfare cuts, is a moral and political disaster in the making.

”Only a clear change of direction, based on redistributive taxation and a genuine end of austerity, will suffice.”

Labour MP for Crawley Peter Lamb has also told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour he would be “voting against anything which is going to restrict access to [the Personal Independence Payment, paid to certain people with disabilities] further than it’s currently restricted.”

Many Labour MPs across different wings of the party are “deeply uncomfortable” with what ministers are planning, he added.

The Chancellor is being urged to spell out how she will fund restoring winter fuel payments to pensioners while facing mounting calls for the two-child benefit cap to be axed at a cost of around £3.5 billion. The Prime Minister is now intimating he supports amending the winter fuel cut and lifting the cap.

There are growing signs that plans to introduce stricter eligibility criteria for personal independence payments could be watered down too in the face of the backbench revolt, with Sir Keir reportedly considering “tweaks” to welfare plans ministers hope will cut spending by £5 billion a year.

Benefit claimants could be given longer “transitional periods” to seek out other benefits if they lose out as a result of the reforms, according to the Times.

Health minister Karin Smyth said the PM’s announcement that he wants more pensioners to get winter fuel payments was “the sign of a government that is listening.”

She told LBC Radio that measures to tackle child poverty had to be looked at “in the round,” though officials have insisted there is no single “silver bullet” to reduce child poverty.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is expected to commit to restoring the winter fuel payment in full, as well as scrapping the two-child benefit cap, in a speech today.