Family Law
Lords whallop Government's Welfare Bill
The Government has suffered a defeat over its plan to limit welfare payments to £26,000 per family after peers voted to remove child benefit from the cap. The measure at a stroke inflicted a £130 million-a-year dent in the savings that would have been made the cap. The Bill will now return to the Commons, where ministers have vowed to unpick the amendment.
Lib Dem, Labour and crossbench peers backed a bishop's amendment by 252 to 237 that child benefit should not be included in the cap.
Critics argued that imposing the same cap on all families, regardless of size, would penalise children.
The government said it was "very disappointed" and the vote "clearly flies in the face of public opinion".
Earlier the government defeated another amendment proposed by Labour to exempt people considered at risk of homelessness from the cap.
If implemented in its current form, the government's benefit cap will save £290m next year, with 67,000 families losing on average £83 a week.
It's not a vast amount of money in the context of a welfare budget that runs to tens of billions of pounds, but its significance goes wider for the government.
First, ministers believe that they are in the same place as a significant portion of public opinion.
Second it reinforces the government's central policy aim of getting more people off benefits and into work by, they would say, encouraging a change in behaviour.
Thirdly it puts pressure on Labour, who know they can't oppose the cap outright, but have ended up having to criticise the implementation, a much less clear-cut position.
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