“There are no easy choices, but these are the options the Chancellor has. What he should not do is raid Universal Credit to pay for any transitional changes or he will be recreating the same problem there.

“The projected savings through changes to tax credits is £4.4 billion, the Government plans to turn a surplus of £10 billion in 2019-20 and of 11.6 billion in 2020-21.

“Why have a surplus if we can’t protect those on the lowest pay, doing the right thing by taking work?

“The Chancellor can protect these workers and have a surplus by 2020.

“This Government is set to achieve its historic aim to make sure work always pays more than welfare, we shouldn’t put that at risk.”

Paul Johnson, the Director of the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, questioned whether the move would raise enough to limit the impact of tax credits. He said: “If you are also increasing the taper rate then you are losing quite a lot of the key design of Universal Credit.”

Both the Treasury and the Deparment for Work and Pensions have declined to comment, but Conservative Tim Montgomerie, a columnist for The Times and founder of the Conservative Home website, said he believed George Osborne “could be forced to resign” over his tax credit omnishambles, and he warned that the chancellor faces a “massive rebellion” from his own party because the policy  is “terrible politics”.

“You cannot fight an election saying you are standing up for hard-working families then you cut benefits for hard-working families,” he said.

Perhaps it is time for the Conservatives to recognise that policies are not an ideological tool designed to ensure the government gets its own way in exercising traditional Tory prejudices towards the working and non-working poor.

However, in fairness there has been a series of right-wing backbenchers that have aired their disquiet at the cuts, although that unease may have be motivated by a pragmatic rather than an any ethical objection. The proposed tax credit cuts do make a mockery of the Tory claims to ensuring that “work always pays,”and presents the public with an incoherent narrative that has now lost any credibilty.

Montgomerie said:

“I don’t think George Osborne will tweak,” he said. “If he does just try to get away with this, he will not just be defeated in the Lords, he will be defeated in the Commons.”

Courtesy of Robert Livingstone