Iain Duncan Smith is spearheading the government’s welfare changes

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has accused bishops who oppose plans for welfare changes of failing to show concern for ordinary people.

He said they should think of those who pay taxes while some unemployed people live in large houses at public expense.

Bishops are expected to oppose the plans in the House of Lords on Monday.

The Rt Rev John Packer, bishop of Ripon and Leeds, told the BBC that child benefit should be exempted from a proposed cap on benefits.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Mr Duncan Smith admitted his plans for a £26,000 household benefit cap could face defeat in the Lords on Monday.

‘Not a kindness’

He said the bishops were not doing poorer people any favours.

He said: “The question I’d ask these bishops is, over all these years, why have they sat back and watched people being placed in houses they cannot afford? It’s not a kindness.

The minister added: “I would like to see a more balanced response”.

“It’s all very well for the bishops to express a political opinion, but I would love them to ask about the poor people on low incomes who are working hard, whose families share rooms, who are doing the right thing.”

Mr Duncan Smith acknowledged that the result of the Lords’ vote could depend on independent crossbenchers, including the bishops.

“My sense is that unless I can persuade them that they’re in the wrong place on this one, which they are, then they might be tempted to vote against it. It’s down to the crossbenchers,” he said.

Inflicted defeats

Earlier this week Mr Duncan Smith told the BBC that the planned benefits cap was not “about punishing people” but was aimed at making lives better by reducing dependency.

Bishop Packer told Radio 4’s Sunday programme: “Certainly there is a real concern about the sheer amount of money from the welfare system which is going through and simply being paid out in rent. But that’s not what tomorrow’s debate is about; tomorrow’s debate is about children.

“What we’re talking about tomorrow is children in families where the welfare benefits have been cut to a point where they are less than Parliament actually has said they should be, because that’s what a cap does.

“I doubt if we shall be voting against it [the bill] in its final form. What we will be doing I hope tomorrow is voting for an amendment to exclude child benefit from the cap so that people who are on benefit receive child benefit just like everybody else in the country.”

Peers having already inflicted a series of defeats on the government’s flagship Welfare Reform Bill, which applies to England, Scotland and Wales.

However, Mr Duncan Smith said ministers were “determined” to get his reforms through Parliament.

The bill introduces a single Universal Credit to replace six work-based benefits.

But other measures, including reducing entitlements to Employment and Support Allowance and changes to Disability Living Allowance, have run into trouble in the Lords.

In November, 18 Church of England bishops signed an open letter criticising the government’s proposed welfare changes.

Their intervention received the backing of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16669850