Workington MP Sue Hayman was one of almost 50 Labour MPs who broke ranks and voted against the welfare bill, despite being told by their party to abstain.

Here, she explains why she defied her party’s whip:

I voted against the Tory government’s Welfare Reform and Work Bill.

I don’t expect a medal for that – I’m a Labour MP after all.

But I want to explain briefly why I did that when Labour’s official position in Parliament was to abstain, and let the bill go through to the next stage unopposed.

Only last week, Labour voted against the Government’s Budget in the House of Commons.

One of the main reasons for this was the cuts to welfare which will hit the poorest in our society the hardest.

I spoke in the Budget debate, to highlight how the changes will hit young people in particular, increasing child poverty and teenage homelessness.

My speech in the Budget debate and my position on this issue were entirely consistent with Labour’s official position in Parliament.

I was therefore dismayed when at the end of last week the Parliamentary party decided Labour MPs should abstain on the welfare bill.

This was unexpected and not consistent with our position on the Budget – why vote against one and not the other?

Many of us were concerned that abstaining would send the wrong message to the country and I signed Helen Goodman’s proposed amendment to the bill which addressed the key issues.

This amendment was subsequently replaced by an official Labour amendment; the position was that we should vote for the amendment, but if it fell we should abstain on the main vote and attack the bill at committee stage, when we could make changes.

I understood that position; I also understood that the Tories have a majority and were always going to get the bill through last night.

The only bit I couldn’t understand was why, if the amendment fell, we should not then oppose the bill when we know it contains measures which are unacceptable to us.

We could oppose it and still press for changes at committee stage. This is the normal course of events.

For me to abstain on the welfare bill, when I am on the record as recently as last week opposing welfare cuts affecting young people, would have been hypocritical. 

I am not a rebel – it gave me no pleasure at all to vote against the whip and I do not expect it to happen again. 

But I am not a hypocrite either, and for me there was never any choice other than to vote against the bill. It was the Parliamentary Labour Party position that changed, not mine.