United Kingdom Lords Vote to Delay Osborne's Welfare Cuts for Parents

Ministers have warned peers against challenging the primacy of the elected House of Commons, which has voted three times on the issue.

"But", he added, "it has happened, and now we must address the consequences of that". I hope I will be able to use my ears and listen well.

A Lib Dem proposal for peers to send the chancellor back to the drawing board altogether failed to gain support.

She told the House of Lords that her amendment to the regulations was a "delaying motion" and not "fatal" to the Government's plans.

Peers will decide whether to reject controversial tax credit cuts in a highly-charged showdown over the impact of the squeeze on low-income families. "This is a serious matter and I ask for the speaker to give a statement to protect the rights of the elected representatives, not just for us but for the people of this country".

The Sky Data shows that 80% of people who voted for the Tories in May want to see low income workers protected from Government cuts. But ministers say that peers do not have the right to block financial measures approved by the House of Commons.

If it doesn't the Treasury will be alone in the spotlight, not sharing it with a distracting "constitutional crisis" over which house of parliament rules.

"However, this is an opportunity for the House of Lords ... to improve and suggest in a way that doesn't break this long-standing constitutional convention".

"I think it is perfectly possible with tweaking it to take more from the upper end of the tax credit scale and less from the lower end of the tax credit scale", Lord Lawson said.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said: "George Osborne has got to think again".

The Labour and crossbench motions would delay the cuts and ensure full compensation for those affected for at least three years.

"They should be very mindful about what they are doing", she told the BBC.

"We will not exceed our authority but neither will we be cowed into abdicating our responsibilities to hold government - any government - to account".

"None of these things in any way offsets the volume of losses people will have", he said.

Conservatives have warned that opposing the cuts are not in the remit of the Lords because they are a financial issue, and they have warned of constitutional repercussions for the Upper Chamber.

She said: "The threats that have been made to the House of Lords as an institution is nothing more than parliamentary bullying".

She said that if the plans went ahead it would have resulted in millions of individuals finding out they were to lose thousands of pounds in letters sent to their homes at Christmas: "Those families believed us when we all said that work was the best route out of poverty, that work would always pay".

The Conservatives have a majority in the Commons but not in the Lords, whose members are mostly political appointees, with a smattering of hereditary nobles, judges and clergy.

Under the changes proposed, the working tax credits would fall from £6,420 to £3,850 in April.

Joking about the flak he endured for reversing a decision to back the Chancellor's fiscal charter, he said: "I have written to George Osborne today to say 'I know what a U-turn looks like and how it can damage you but we need a U-turn on this one".

Liberal Democrat peers. Lord Dick Newby, the party's chief whip in the Lords, says that this is the only recourse given that the cuts have been introduced through a "statutory amendment", a piece of secondary legislation that "permits very little discussion in either house" and is largely "unamendable".