Should the government remove VAT relief from some new Motability leases?

Yes carried the day, 33 votes to 28, an eight-point margin that makes this one of the closer welfare calls this platform has put to a vote. It is a win, but not a mandate — nearly half the chamber wanted the relief kept intact, a reminder that even a "savings" framing on disability support divides opinion almost down the middle.

The real story is age, not gender, where male and female voters landed on identical 57% Yes shares. Younger cohorts were far more sceptical: 25-34s broke against the change 9 to 6, and 16-24s split evenly, while every age band from 35 upward tipped into majority support, climbing to 63% among 55-64s and 75% among the small band of over-65s.

That generational gradient echoes a familiar pattern in welfare-reform votes here, where older voters — likelier to have direct or family experience of disability benefits, or simply more attuned to Treasury arithmetic — tend to accept trims framed around fiscal savings, while younger voters are warier of anything that narrows access to support. The £1bn saving by 2030 clearly persuaded a majority, but it was the middle-aged and older who did the persuading.

A verdict, then, but one built on a fault line running through the years rather than between the sexes.