A Labour government would not reverse the Tory led-coalition’s planned £26,000-a-year benefits cap – which the Opposition supports “in principle” –despite the party voting with Liberal Democrat peers and Church of England bishops to reject it in the House of Lords, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne said this week.
He said the proposed cap of £26,000 was “a good place to start”.
The Bill has contributed significantly to recent opinion poll surges putting Prime Minister David Cameron ahead of Labour leader Ed Miliband, even though the claimed £270-£300 million savings are dwarfed by the overall £198 billion social welfare budget.
The Welfare Bill suffered its fifth rejection in the Lords earlier this week
but coalition ministers, who believe they have backed a winning, popular policy could not contain their delight as they pledged to press ahead with it in the House of Commons.
The Lords were out of touch with public opinion, the Government insisted, as it revelled in the contortions of the Labour Party which found itself opposing a bill it said it supports. The Labour front bench was even reported to have held a special midweek briefing by party pollsters as to the popularity of the policy among certain sections of voters.
The Government lost by 257 votes to 232 Labour peers, who reversed their official party stance, and joined the bishops and Lib Dems led by their former leader Paddy Ashdown in backing the amendment to exempt child benefit from the £26,000 cap.
Lord Ashdown asked how could it be right for a household with joint earnings of £80,000 to get child benefit but not a family with income of less than a third of that.
The Department of Work and Pensions insisted that excluding child benefit would mean an effective benefits cap of closer to £50,000.
Mr Duncan Smith’s shadow, Liam Byrne, defended the party’s stance after a proposed Labour amendment asking for safeguards to protect those at risk of homelessness was rejected a s a “wrecking” amendment.
He said it was justified because the bill was so badly devised it risked imposing the costs of ensuing homelessness on councils and council taxpayers.
The DWP says 67,000 families will lose money, as opposed to the 50,000 previously estimated but will not ay how many are expected to be plunged into poverty. Mr Duncan Smith says that, on the contrary, they will be encouraged not into poverty but into work.
His stance was supported this week by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and his predecessor George Carey, both of whom criticised their colleagues in the Lords.
