Should the government increase child benefit by £2500 per year for 0-2 year olds and introduce £7000 childcare vouchers for 3-4 year olds?

The result was tight rather than emphatic — No's six-point margin out of 51 votes is the kind of finish that leaves both camps able to claim a moral victory, even if the ledger says otherwise. This was not a rout but a genuine split decision, decided on the day by a handful of votes.

The real story sits in the age breakdown. The 25-34 bracket backed the boost by 58%, and 35-44s went further still at 67%, the two groups most likely to actually have toddlers in the household. Against them stood the 55-64s, who rejected it by 27% yes, and the small clutch of over-65s who leaned the same way — a fairly clean generational split between those who'd cash the cheque and those who'd fund it through general taxation.

That pattern echoes the perennial fault line in welfare votes: universal cash transfers to young families versus the instinct, concentrated among older voters, that state generosity should be means-tested or restrained. Gender barely mattered here — men split 46% yes, women 55% yes, both close to the overall figure — so it was age, not sex, doing the work of dividing this chamber.

A £2,500-and-£7,000 offer that split almost precisely along the fault line of who has young children and who doesn't.