Lords defeat Govt welfare reforms that 'rob the poor'

The government has suffered a significant setback in its welfare reform agenda after the House of Lords defeated three of the coalition’s main proposals.

However the government has vowed to press ahead with the process and reverse the amendments when the Welfare Reform Bill returns to the House of Commons.

Peers rejected plans to means-test Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) payments for disabled people after only a year.

They also defeated proposals to time-limit ESA for those undergoing cancer treatment and to restrict access to the benefit for young people with disabilities or illness.

The proposals were branded as morally wrong by Lord Patel, a crossbencher, who said: "If we are going to rob the poor to pay the rich, then we enter into a different form of morality".

Baroness Meacher, who tabled the amendment regarding benefits for young people, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the reforms crossed the line of British decency.

She added that the government's claim the reforms were to spend taxpayers' money where it was most needed was "absolutely not the case".

"I trust they will not push ahead with these reforms because the majorities were very considerable and unusually high.

"The British public do not accept that banks screw up and very severely disabled people pay the bill," she added.

However, Chris Grayling MP, the Employment Minister, responded by saying: "We've said very clearly we will seek to reverse the amendments when the Bill comes back into the Commons.

"We are dealing with extraordinarily difficult times economically and with the cost of welfare state we have to make tough decisions," he added.