The gigantic hole in which George Osborne and David Cameron now find themselves after the Lords voted to neutralise tax credit cuts for three years is entirely of their own making (PM’s warning to peers after tax rebellion, 27 October). The prime minister can huff and puff at the Lords in bully-boy fashion as much as he likes, but it is obvious that he and his chancellor have brought about this debacle in several ways.
To begin with, Cameron is on record as lying to the public before the May election that he did not plan to cut tax credits. Yet Osborne’s immediate post-election statements made it clear that cuts had been factored in all along.
Secondly, both deliberately chose not to engage with the analysis of the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies that the cuts to tax credits would make 3 million of the poorest workers £1,000 worse off. So, despite obfuscations about trade-offs once the “national living wage” came into effect, they have been completely unable to convince the public that they are, as claimed, with jaw-dropping hypocrisy, the “party of working people”.
Thirdly, Osborne chose not to include the cuts in his finance bill but in supplementary legislation, making it easier for peers to kick them into the long grass, outraged by what many believed was a “morally indefensible” and purely ideological strong-arm tactic.
Finally, Cameron, who has already declared that he will not see out this term in office, and Osborne, who aches to be leader, did not consider at all the impact of the cuts on those Tory MPs whose small majorities would be affected.
This is not so much omnishambles mark 2, but a sinkhole which the two will need a long ladder to climb out of.
Barbara Cairns
Leicester
• David Cameron argues that the unelected House of Lords should not be entitled to break a “constitutional convention” that limits their powers. David Cameron was elected on the basis of an explicit promise to the electorate which he broke within weeks. What convention applies here?
Ruth Allen
Kinoulton, Nottinghamshire
• The true constitutional precedent from 1910 is that the government should resign and fight a general election on the issue.
Cllr Nigel Ashton
Lib Dem, Southport
• At least one good thing may be said about the House of Lords – it has moved into the 21st century. In 1911 it was on the side of the rich – a hundred years later it has chosen to side with the poor.
Dr DJ Rowe
Newcastle upon Tyne
• I commend the government’s repeated commitment to ensure that cuts are distributed fairly. The net effect of the proposed changes to tax credits is that the poorest working families will be up to £1,800 worse off. That is their contribution to balancing the books. I am a higher-rate taxpayer with no children; where is my contribution?
Aled Batey
London
• Yes, tax credits were introduced by Gordon Brown, but they replaced family income supplement. This was introduced by the Heath government in 1971, a time when there was a political consensus that punishing poor people was wrong and that it is in nobody’s interest for the nation’s children to be brought up in poverty.
Sheila Spooner
Enfield, Middlesex
• Matthew d’Ancona says the tax credit bill of £30bn is “patently absurd” (Vandalise tax credit reform at your peril, my Lords, 26 October). But what if, instead of regarding this as a burden, we envisage it as a first stage in the construction of a citizens’ income? In a globalised economy, with huge disparities of wage levels, an overall surplus of labour and an oncoming tsunami of automation, it’s unlikely that pushing up minimum wage rates or even strengthening trade unions – desirable though both are – will on their own bring about an acceptable degree of economic justice. Following the moral logic of economic equality would begin the necessary process of sweeping away the whole tired discourse of handout, subsidy, incentives, deserving and undeserving.
Richard Middleton
Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway
• Matthew d’Ancona asks whether we “really want Osborne’s measure to be overturned by a super-committee of the unelected”. Of course we do, and the Lords have every right to do so; the Salisbury convention ensures that government bills get through the Lords, even though “the government of the day has no majority in the Lords”, as long as the bill was “mentioned in an election manifesto”, to quote parliament’s website. As “plans to cut tax credits” did not appear in the Tories’ manifesto, the House of Lords has no choice. It is not the peers who are acting unconstitutionally, but the government, and this point is being ignored by most political commentators.
Indeed, the peers supporting the measure need to ask themselves an important question about the upper house’s raison d’etre; if it does not check legislation, and hold governments to account, what is the justification for its existence?
Bernie Evans
Liverpool
• Matthew d’Ancona tries to camouflage an issue of democratic principle beneath a load of flannel about constitutional propriety: the Lords as “a super-committee of the unelected”. Pray tell us, Matthew, how is a response by a free-voting constitutional body that on this issue seems to reflect public opinion less democratic than a government elected by only 37% of voters pushing a proposal through parliament which was not even in its manifesto?
Bryn Jones
Bath
• The irony of Matthew d’Ancona’s article is that the political makeup of the current House of Lords is closer to that of the electorate in the 2015 election than that of the House of Commons.
The Tories have 51% of seats in the Commons compared with 49% for all other parties. In the Lords 33% are Tory compared with 67% for all others. In the 2015 election Tories had 37% of those who voted, all others 63%. This is the exact opposite of the 1911 situation, where the only Lords were hereditary and although the Commons then was in no way representative of the population, generally it was far more representative of the population than the Lords.
David Horler
Thame, Oxfordshire
• David Cameron is simply reaping the whirlwind of his failure to implement the 2010 coalition agreement to make provision for a wholly or mainly elected second chamber. It is no use now threatening unelected peers, when he should rather have warned the 91 Conservative MPs who voted against their three-line whip on the House of Lords reform bill on 10 July 2012. A much smaller second chamber, with its main element elected proportionally, would have had the legitimacy that he now seeks to deny the unelected chamber.
Michael Meadowcroft
Leeds
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