Lords Reject Plan for Welfare Cap to Include Child Benefit

The government's welfare reforms took another battering when a cross-party alliance, including many Liberal Democrat peers, voted to exclude child benefit from plans to impose a blanket £26,000 cap on household welfare benefits. In the fifth significant government defeat on the bill, peers voted to temper the cap by 252 to 237. Conservatives are convinced the cap, due to come into force next year is hugely popular, and lambasted Labour for talking tough on welfare and then voting against the proposals. But the coalition assault was weakened by the number of senior Lib Dem peers, including Lord Ashdown, backing calls by bishops that child benefit should be excluded from the cap. Ashdown for the first time voted against the coalition government, intervening in the debate to ask what justification a minister could give morally or otherwise to withdraw a universal benefit for those on £26,000 but not for those earning £80,000. The government will now have to decide whether simply to reinstate child benefit in the cap when the bill returns to the Commons or instead propose some clearer transitional relief. Read more on the Guardian website.