Liz Kendall set to address furious Labour MPs as Keir Starmer on the brink of major revolt from own ranks

More than 100 Labour MPs have signed a letter warning the Prime Minister that they will not back the Government in Parliament.

Labour is making a series of cuts to sickness and disability benefits in a bid to get more people back in work.

Kendall will try to explain the Government's plans to those in attendance at the Parliamentary Labour Party meeting and answer concerns from angry MPs.

Starmer was met with backlash from backbenchers over the matter when he held his own private meeting with his party's rank and file.

Labour MP Ian Byrne has warned Kendall to expect to be bombarded by colleagues demanding the Government rethink its plan.

“I will be attending the briefing from Liz Kendall and I hope the Government have listened to the disabled community who are terrified of the planned cuts, charities who have outlined their catastrophic impact and MPs who are relaying this message to the Government from their constituencies," he told The Mirror.

“After the Winter Fuel debacle and the damage it’s done to the Government's standing, we need desperately to listen to the country and return to the core Labour values of tackling poverty and inequality and I hope this is the case otherwise I and many of my colleagues will vote against these measures as they currently stand.”

Another MP warned: "There's a clear indication of the mood in the PLP - it's not very forgiving at the moment."

Meanwhile a third told the publication: "If you think that Keir Starmer got a bit of a rough ride a couple of weeks ago and the largest issue that people had concerns about was welfare reform, and then you've got Liz Kendall standing in front of them, all of the concerns are going to be about welfare reform."

Ministers are also thought to be considering tweaks to soften welfare cuts to help reduce the size of the backbench rebellion.

The Government is examining a potential change that could allow up to 200,000 people to keep their disability benefits by tweaking assessment rules.

Officials are looking at ways to reduce the impact of the proposed cuts whilst maintaining the overall direction of the policy changes.

One of the changes being looked at is a tweak to the proposed PIP assessment rules so that individuals who receive a high overall score continue to be eligible, even if they do not receive at least four points in any category.

Under the Government's planned changes, claimants would not qualify for PIP unless they scored a minimum of four points on a single daily living activity.

Assessments score the difficulty from zero to 12 that claimants face in a range of living activities such as preparing and eating food, communicating, washing and getting dressed.

The potential modification would allow high-scoring individuals to retain their benefits despite not meeting the four-point threshold in individual categories.

Another potential tweak could mean more time is given to claimants who lose access to one disability benefit to apply for other support they may be eligible for.

The Times reported this week that benefit claimants could be given longer "transitional periods" to ease the impact of losing support.

The extended timeframes would provide additional breathing space for individuals whose current benefits are being withdrawn under the reforms.

This would allow them to navigate the application process for alternative forms of assistance they might qualify for without facing an immediate gap in support.

Speaking last month Kendall admitted that welfare changes are "never easy and rarely popular, perhaps especially for Labour governments".

However, she vowed that she would not "resile" from difficult decisions.

She said: "Unless we reform the system to help those who can work to do so, unless we get social security spending on a more sustainable footing, the risk is the welfare state won't be there for people who really need it in future."