TREASURY Secretary Damian Hinds led the Tories in the House of Commons yesterday in a spirited defence of the government’s plan to axe tax credits.

He gave full vent to the Chancellor’s claim that reduced tax credits make sense as part of a full package, which includes what the Tories falsely call a national living wage, increased personal tax allowances and rising employment.

Hinds insisted that 80 per cent of households will be better off by 2017-18.

However, he was forced to concede that this applies to 80 per cent of all households — not 80 per cent of the working poor who are the victims of this cruel policy that David Cameron specifically ruled out prior to the general election.

Nor could he explain how a marginal rise in statutory wage levels — whether called a minimum or living wage — or higher tax allowances might compensate families experiencing an immediate annual reduction of up to £1,300 in their income.

Even accepting the Treasury Secretary’s figures, this would mean that 20 per cent of households will suffer.

These 3.5 million low-income families, 2.7 million of which have children, will be hard up against it.

Green MP Caroline Lucas, who said that 4,400 of her own constituents would be affected by the cuts in tax credits, noted that people living in areas with “sky-high rents” will suffer most.

Government failure to fund council housing for over three decades has thrown low-paid and even medium-income workers into the hands of the private rented sector, stretching family budgets to unbearable limits while driving up housing benefits paid to landlords.

Tory MPs have a majority in the Commons, but even here there are signs that the government could be in trouble.

Independent North Down MP Sylvia Hermon admitted her shame for having supported the policy in the mistaken confidence that George Osborne would mitigate its effects.

She gave notice that she would back the opposition motion backed by Hinds’s Labour shadow Seema Malhotra.

Yet more worrying for the government was the decision by Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron to instruct his peers to vote next week in favour of a motion, probably moved by crossbencher Molly Meacher, to stop the Tories in their tracks.

The Morning Star is implacably opposed to the existence of the House of Lords or any chamber based on a combination of heredity and patronage.

But that is the constitutional system we are lumbered with, so all available measures must be used to frustrate this act of inhumanity.

If the Tories are compelled to go back to square one in the legislative process, this gives another chance to mobilise public opinion against the Cameron-Osborne government’s equivalent of Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax and to force a general election.

Credibility gap

LORD WARNER, who has left the Labour Party, believes that it is no longer credible and cannot win a general election with Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

Fortunately for him, he has never had to bother with elections, switching from civil servant to a life in ermine, courtesy of Tony Blair’s patronage.

Warner achieved brief notoriety last year when proposing a monthly £10 poll tax and £20 overnight hospital accommodation charge to finance our health service.

He was the only Labour peer in April 2013 to back a Tory measure to open up all NHS services to private contract.

Curiously enough, Warner is linked to companies that have sold or seek to sell their services to the NHS.

As his fellow peer John Prescott comments, “No credibility. No great loss.”