Members back Afghan-Palestinian routes for women and girls

Members split almost down the middle on the most charged questions of the day, narrowly backing Should the United Kingdom provide safe and legal routes for Afghan and Palestinian women and girls to resettle here? The women-and-girls route won narrowly, but the loudest case against it was not simply a rejection of refuge: it argued that help should begin at home, with one voter insisting, “We should focus firstly on women and girls already in the UK.”

The verdicts

Should the two‑child benefit cap be reinstated in the UK? also passed narrowly. The cap’s return won narrowly, but the arguments the floor rewarded most were not chiefly about budgets: the leading Yes voices cast its removal as demographic engineering, while opponents warned children would pay for it.

Members comfortably rejected Should the government scrap inheritance tax? “It's simply theft,” said the floor’s most-respected Yes voice; still, No edged a narrow victory, with its case for keeping the revenue while reforming the thresholds answering the charge of repeated taxation.

The monarchy survived comfortably as members voted down Should the UK have an elected president instead of a monarch? The strongest No arguments turned less on royal affection than on who voters feared might replace the Crown: “President Boris Johnson” was the floor’s most-respected warning.

Is scrapping the pension triple lock to fund NHS-style social care the right decision? was rejected comfortably. The strongest No case did not defend the triple lock without qualification: it argued that pension reform and social care should not be bundled into one promise, while the most-respected voices in the room warned against trading one strained system for another.

Members also comfortably voted against Should the UK introduce a single digital ID to replace National Insurance, NHS and licence numbers? A state-issued master key was the fear that carried the day, with one of the floor’s sharpest objections simply that “We are incapable of doing it on time and on budget.”

Should civil servants’ defined‑benefit pension schemes be closed to align with the private sector? passed comfortably. The push to make civil-service pensions look more like private-sector ones won comfortably, though the floor’s sharpest clash was over whether fairness means equalising pensions or comparing the whole pay package.

Finally, members narrowly agreed that Is the definition of ‘British national’ too ambiguous, varying with personal beliefs? The argument that “the term British national is often misused by politicians and the media” helped carry Yes to a narrow win.

Voting continues today.

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