I READ with interest the letter from Irene McLeod of Wemyss Bay ('Martin McCluskey visit to Women’s Aid criticised').

As regular readers of the Greenock Telegraph and your letters page will know, Irene was an SNP candidate at the last council election and was a frequent correspondent about me in the period leading up to the 2019 election.

I assume there is nothing I can say or do that will please Irene.

I wish, however, to address the points she raises.

I believe the rape clause and the two-child cap is a heinous policy, dreamt up by Tory ministers with little grasp of reality.

There is nothing I would like to see more than it scrapped.

There is also a lot more I would like to change to make the social security system fairer for people who rely on it.

That is why I support full reform of Universal Credit and why Labour has promised a full review of the system if we win the General Election next year.

I also believe that any changes we propose have to be fully funded.

There is no point making promises that we don’t know how to deliver.

That is the approach the Tories took with their disastrous budget last year and we are all still suffering the consequences. Labour will only make pledges before the next election that are fully funded.

Irene McLeod also said that the Scottish Government mitigate the two-child cap in Scotland.

That is not true.

Scottish Labour pressed the SNP Government to do this, but they refused.

In 2019, the SNP’s then social security secretary, Shirley-Anne Somerville, said: “People are calling for us to mitigate but we are taking this as far as we can at this point. It’s not our policy to alleviate the two-child cap.”

That remains the case today.

The SNP have turned their fire on Labour because they know that there is a real possibility that we will form the next UK Government.

Until we hopefully win the election, we are not in government in Scotland or the UK.

That means when it comes to policies like the two-child cap and the bedroom tax there is no action we can take today to change it. Those powers lie in the hands of the SNP and the Tories.

In attacking the possibility of a Labour government, the SNP members who are filling this letters page on a regular basis are putting themselves wildly at odds with the Scottish people.

In poll after poll, a majority across Scotland say they would prefer a Labour government to a Tory one.

But Humza Yousaf has said that he would "frustrate” a Labour government. This is an appalling statement from the First Minister who appears to prefer a Tory government because that suits his own political project, even if it makes people in our community worse off.

Between now and the general election I will continue to make the case to people across Inverclyde as to why they should elect me as their MP at the next election and, in doing so, help to build a Labour majority government.

I look forward to continuing the campaign.

Martin McCluskey

Labour Candidate for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West