Ministers should now bring forward new measures to help working families, investing in tax credits not cutting them.
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As opposition mounted top Tory Lady Stowell pleaded with peers that Mr Osborne would offer a few concessions if they did not inflict a humiliating defeat. I hope I will be able to use my ears and listen well.
Osborne told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee last week that he was “comfortable” with the tax credit cuts, saying: “This is fundamentally a judgement call, and I’m comfortable with the judgement call that I have made, and that the House of Commons has supported this week”.
In the minutes after the votes, David Cameron suggested the Government would seek retribution for the defeat.
There is an unresolved question about how far the Lords should stray into the government’s finances.
Q. What reforms were peers voting on?
It followed days of veiled threats from David Cameron to flood the Lords with more than 100 new Tory peers if they dared to opposed the cuts.
However, a Number 10 spokesman said: “The PM is determined we will address this constitutional issue”.
“My view is I would be reluctant to see us do really dramatic changes, but it is really a matter of trying to sort out the relationship between the Commons and the Lords, if the Lords is intent on wrecking the manifesto of the elected Government”.
A separate Lib Dem motion throwing tax credit cuts out of Parliament altogether was expected to be rejected.
A rare “fatal motion” tabled by Liberal Democrats that would kill off the changes has not won Labour backing so is unlikely to succeed.
Downing Street said that Mr Cameron wanted to see the conventions governing relations between the Lords and the Commons reinstated.
They are based upon data from the Office of National Statistics and House of Commons Library on typical gross earnings.
UUP members of the Lords did not vote.
Michael Ellis, Theresa May’s parliamentary private secretary, said: “It should and hopefully will have consequences for the House of Lords”.
The House of Lords has voted to delay the introduction of controversial cuts to welfare benefits paid to people on low incomes, despite warnings that such a move could provoke a constitutional crisis.
“It’s finding the right way to do that ahead of the Autumn Statement”. He voted to delay the reforms.
“The Chancellor has failed to understand the worry and alarm this has caused amongst people who work hard and do the right thing”.
The three-and-a-half-hour debate saw the cuts attacked from all sides, with Christopher Foster, the Bishop of Portsmouth, calling them “morally indefensible”.
Britain does not have a Constitution, which is why the breaking up of rules with constitutional significance is taken very seriously. “It puts us on to a perpetual treadmill”.
Baroness Smith of Basildon, shadow leader of the Lords, accused ministers of attempting to “bully” the Lords.
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“If he U-turns fairly and in full on his tax credit cuts then I will support him on it, and so will the public”.
