Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Religious leaders have piled on to attack Conservative ministers' attempts to reform laws affecting child poverty.

Bishops sitting in the House of Lords voiced "deep concern" over a Bill that would change metrics used to measure the success of hitting poverty targets and cut welfare paid to domestic violence victims with more than two kids.

They said that if passed, the proposals would "lead to more children and families being poor".

Paul Butler, the Bishop of Durham, lamented he was worried by what he saw as the Government's reluctance to publish information and statistics on child poverty figures that could used by politicians and charities to hold it to account.

George Osborne executed a U-turn on planned cuts to tax credits, using an unexpected £27bn fiscal windfall in a bid to defuse a damaging political row.

The chancellor had promised to modify his plan, which would have cost low-income families an average of £1,000 a year, after a rebellion in the Lords and among his own MPs.

As he delivered his autumn statement on Wednesday, Osborne claimed to have listened to concerns about the changes and decided “the simplest thing to do is not to phase these changes in but to avoid them altogether”.

He said higher than expected tax revenues and lower interest payments on government debt had opened up an extra £27bn of fiscal wriggle room, which will be used to cancel the tax credit plans and ease back on the scale of spending cuts in other areas.
The reversal of tax credit cuts is not just an embarrassing climbdown since he introduced the plans four months ago. It also means the chancellor breaches his self-imposed welfare cap, which was meant to limit the cost of social security. Osborne said he would still cut £12bn from the welfare bill, but would do so “in a way that helps families, as we make the transition to our national living wage”.