UK Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has hit out at bishops trying to block his welfare reforms, accusing them of ignoring the concerns of ordinary people.
Mr Duncan Smith said the Church of England bishops, who are threatening to derail his planned £26,000 benefit cap, should think more of low-income families who try to do ‘the right thing’.
The Church of England said it had a ‘moral obligation to speak up for those who have no voice’ and said government needed to reassess the new Welfare Reform Bill.
But Mr Duncan Smith urged the bishops, who are leading the opposition in the upper chamber, to rethink their objections, insisting they were not doing the poor any favours.
‘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,’ he said to the Sunday Times in an interview.
The Rt Rev John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, said he was not opposed to all aspects of the bill but believed child benefit should be exempted from the cap.
“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,” he told the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme.