Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What to expect from today’s Lords showdown on tax credits

There could be four troublesome votes on tax credits in the Lords this afternoon, each challenging not just the measures that George Osborne is keen to introduce, but also the way that the Lords functions.

The most troublesome of all in terms of the constitutional implications is the amendment to the motion introducing the instrument from Baroness Manzoor. This is the Lib Dem ‘fatal’ motion and it changes the government motion ‘that the draft Regulations laid before the House on 7 September be approved’ to ‘that this House declines to approve the draft Regulations laid before the House on 7 September’.

The Lib Dems want to appear to be tougher than Labour on the tax credit cuts, and they also don’t care about the constitutional crisis that the motion could trigger, whereby the Tories would have to go ahead with their threat to flood the Upper Chamber with more peers in order to get the motion through. This would look dreadful to anyone on the outside who is already struggling with the point of an unelected Chamber that seems increasingly to be stuffed with people who once did a good job for someone in Whitehall or who is a good chum of someone else in Westminster. And thus it works very well for the Lib Dems to make the Lords look ridiculous: they already think it is and would like to make the case to the wider public for its abolition as an elected chamber.

But the most troublesome motion in terms of tax credits is that tabled by Labour’s Baroness Hollis, which changes the motion to say the following:

‘this House declines to consider the draft Regulations laid before the House on 7 September until the Government, (1) following consultation have reported to Parliament a scheme for full transitional protection for a minimum of three years for all low-income families and individuals currently receiving tax credits before 5 April 2016, such transitional protection to be renewable after three years with parliamentary approval, and (2) have laid a report before the House, detailing their response to the analysis of the draft Regulations by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and considering possible mitigating action.’

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