David Cameron has sought to calm the nascent civil war within his Conservative Party ahead of today's Commons vote on the budget, retreating from further welfare cuts and waving through two amendments from backbench rebels.
The British prime minister used a statement to the house on last week's EU summit to praise Iain Duncan Smith, who resigned as work and pensions secretary and launched a blistering attack on the government's policy direction.
Mr Cameron said that Mr Duncan Smith had spent almost a decade campaigning for welfare reform and spent the last six years implementing these policies in government.
“In that time we have seen nearly half a million fewer children living in workless households, over one million fewer people on out-of-work benefits and nearly 2.4 million more people in work. And, in spite of having to take difficult decisions on the deficit, child poverty, inequality and pensioner poverty are all down. My Right Honourable friend contributed an enormous amount to the work of this government and he can be proud of what he achieved,” he said.
Beleaguered
The prime minister also praised his beleaguered chancellor of the exchequer,
George Osborne
, as Downing Street strenuously dismissed reports of a rift between the two men. Mr Osborne’s abandonment of the proposed cuts to disability benefits which triggered Mr Duncan Smith’s resignation has left a £4.4 billion hole in his budget.
The chancellor, who was not in the chamber yesterday, despite an "urgent question" on the budget from Labour, will close the debate ahead of a vote on Tuesday evening.
Downing Street said yesterday that Mr Osborne will not say how he plans to replace the savings until he makes his autumn statement towards the end of this year. And the government said it would “not oppose” an amendment backed by Conservative rebels which would eliminate VAT on women’s sanitary products, and another from Labour which would block an increase in VAT on solar panels.
‘Compassionate’
In the Commons yesterday, the prime minister insisted that he led “a compassionate, one-nation” government, despite Mr Duncan Smith’s accusation that it was making the most vulnerable in society pay for tax cuts for the better off.
“We will carry on cutting taxes for the lowest paid – in the last parliament we took four million of the lowest paid out of income tax altogether and our further rises to the personal allowance will exempt millions more,” he said.
“And in two weeks’ time we will introduce the first ever national living wage – giving a pay rise to the poorest people in our country.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn asked the prime minister why, when almost the entire cabinet was in the chamber, Mr Osborne was missing.
“Where is he today? Because could he not, instead of covering up for his friend, ask him if he could be kind enough to come along to the house and explain why, for the first time in my memory in parliament, a government’s budget has fallen apart within two days of its delivery,” he said.
