Work and pensions secretary denies welfare cap will lead to an increase in child poverty
Iain Duncan Smith has defended the government's plans to cap the benefits paid to a single household, insisting families would not be "plunged into poverty" as a result of the proposed £26,000 annual limit.
Speaking before Monday's Lords vote on the measures, the work and pensions secretary also denied the £500-a-week cap would lead to an increase in child poverty, adding: "We just don't believe that that's going to happen."
It has emerged that the former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown will join Church of England bishops and other rebel Lib Dems by voting against the proposals unless greater measures are put in placer to ensure children living in poverty are protected.
However, ministers appear determined to ride out the opposition, believing there is strong public support for their plans to curb a "benefits dependency culture" and "make work pay".
Duncan Smith told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the plans would not provoke a rise in either child or adult poverty.
"Our department does not believe that you can directly apportion poverty to this particular measure," he said.
"At £26,000 a year, it's very difficult to believe that families will be plunged into poverty."
Under Duncan Smith's plan, the total amount of benefit that working age people can receive would be capped so that households on out-of-work benefits do not receive more than the average weekly wage earned by working households.
The cap would apply to the combined income from the main out-of-work benefits – jobseeker's allowance, income support and employment support allowance – and other benefits such as housing benefit, child benefit and child tax credit and industrial injuries disablement benefit.
Although the work and pensions secretary admitted his department had not modelled "direct poverty" when plotting the policy, he hit out at critics who have suggested the reforms will bring about an increase in homelessness, saying their definitions of homelessness were "very misleading".
He added: "Nobody will be made homelessness as a result of this. This is about fairness to the taxpayer and fairness to those who are trapped."
On Sunday night, the employment minister, Chris Grayling, acknowledged some families would be forced to find new accommodation as a result of the changes, but strongly defended the measure.
"There certainly will be people who have to move house as a result of this, who have to move to a part of town they can afford to live in, but surely that is right," he told BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics.
Among the bishops who have attacked his plans is the Right Rev John Packer, bishop of Ripon and Leeds, who has called for child benefit to be made exempt. "What we will be doing, I hope, 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," he said.
Duncan Smith said he welcomed Packer's input, but wished the bishops would get in touch with him so they had the correct figures.
"The truth is they are wrong about this," he said.
Labour has tabled an amendment to the bill, which argues for an exemption from the benefit cap for vulnerable individuals and adults with children if they are considered at risk of becoming homeless.
The Department for Work and Pensions said there had to be a limit on the amount of money benefit claimants could receive.
"We think that limit is set at a fair rate of £26k – the equivalent to someone earning £35,000 before tax. If you take child benefit out of the cap, it will simply become ineffective, failing the very principles of our reforms, which is to bring fairness back into our welfare system while ensuring that support goes to those who need it."
Despite the divisions within the Lib Dem ranks, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, has said he is fully signed up to the changes.
Clegg, who rejected Packer's amendment, suggested there was some scope for softening the impact of the changes through "transitional arrangements" around the introduction of the cap.