The row over tax credits could blow out into something much bigger. The House of Lords may table a ‘fatal’ motion — the deadline is 4pm today — which could see peers voting next week to kill off the statutory instrument needed to allow the cuts to come into action. But if that happens, will the government flood the House of Lords with new Tory peers or even suspend it? On the Today programme Lord Robin Butler, the former Cabinet Secretary and a crossbench peer, said the Lords has to accept it is the inferior chamber on financial matters and the Commons has passed the cuts:
‘The fact is the House of Commons has passed it. The House of Lords has long accepted the supremacy of the House of Commons on tax and expenditure — however frustrating that might be for members of the Lords. And there’s no doubt this is a tax and expenditure issue.’
Butler argued it would be ‘quite wrong’ for the Lords to try and overturn the statutory instrument and the government would have a ‘legitimate grievance’ if it did:
‘The House of the Lords is already too big and the fact is that this was established 100 years ago that the House of Lords doesn’t oppose the House of Commons on tax and financial matters and the government would have a quite legitimate grievance if it did and so that would really be an example of the House of Lords getting too big for its nonelected boots.’
But Lord Dick Newby, the Liberal Democrats’ chief whip in Lords, appeared to back the idea of a fatal motion, arguing ‘this is an unprecedented step to push through legislation without proper debate’— noting the growing opposition in all parties:
‘The Prime Minister is acting like a school boy bully isn’t he? He’s been challenged in the playground so he’s threatening to bring around lots of his mates to duff us up. He would be creating a constitutional crisis, but that would be a crisis of his creating — not ours.’
Butler agree this could lead to a constitutional crisis —but it would be one the Lords would inevitably lose. ‘We would be back to 1911 when a very similar situation happened and in the end the House of Lords had to back down’.
But no one really knows for certain what would happen if a fatal motion on tax credit cuts was passed by the Lords. The government does not want to go back to square one and debate the cuts all over again in the Commons — nor would it want to trigger a big debate about the powers and purpose of the House of Lords. The tax credits saga has already been damaging for the government — it will not want to risk even more drama by having a debate about how our democracy works.
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