The Daily Politics

Jeremy Corbyn has struck a deal with Kezia Dugdale allowing the party in Scotland more autonomy.

The Scottish Labour leader said she had a "huge mandate to turn around" its fortunes, but she was not arguing for a separate party.

She spoke to Jo Coburn on the Daily Politics ahead of the Scottish Labour conference this weekend, where the Trident issue is likely to be raised.

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Peter Kellner, president of polling company YouGov, says George Osborne got the politics "badly wrong" on tax credits. The low-paid workers affected by the changes "look like they'll suffer quite badly", he says, and the chancellor "didn't anticipate the political storm that would generate".

He says George Osborne needs to be careful on Lords reform "as a lot of people will say 'good on the Lords for defending low-paid workers'". The government is unlikely to have their public on their side on this, he warns.

Chancellor George Osborne criticises the decision of the House of Lords to vote down a budgeting measure that had been approved by elected MPs. He said the Lords had an "important job as a chamber that says 'have you thought about this' or raises some concerns - and there were opportunities to do that yesterday". But, he adds:

Asked what he will do to help the losers of the tax credit cuts, George Osborne says the government wants to "go on creating jobs and economic security which comes from having a plan that Britain lives within its means" and that, he says, includes reducing welfare.

He repeats that there will be help in the transition to a "lower welfare, high wage" economy - with details to be set out in the upcoming Autumn Statement.

Chancellor George Osborne has been asked why he is determined to press ahead with his tax credit plans, in an interview with BBC economics editor Robert Peston. In reply he says the government is committed to delivering "economic security, jobs and growth" which, he says, involves moving Britain towards a lower welfare, higher wage economy.

Before formal proceedings begin in the House of Lords, Lord Speaker Baroness D'Souza officially informs peers of the death of Lord Noon and offers the whole House's condolences to his family and friends. 

Explaining its decision to call a special conference next month to debate whether to re-affiliate to Labour, the FBU's general secretary Matt Wrack said the fire brigades union was responding to the "remarkable turn of events" which lead to Jeremy Corbyn's election, arguing that this could change the "political landscape". 

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Leaders of the Fire Brigades Union are to recommend re-affiliating to the Labour Party at a special conference next month, the union has said. The FBU, which disaffiliated from Labour in 2004 when Tony Blair was prime minister, has been a strong advocate of new leader Jeremy Corbyn. 

A crackdown on Islamist extremism will fail to stop terrorism and could even make the problem worse, former Business Secretary Vince Cable has warned.

The ex-Lib Dem MP, who was responsible for higher education during his five years in the cabinet, claimed planned new powers to block extremists from speaking on campuses would leave universities so risk averse they would allow only a "bland exchange" of politically correct views.

In a speech to the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Mr Cable said he had blocked attempts to impose restrictions on so-called extremists during his time in government. 

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Speaking in a welfare debate in the Commons, SNP MP Neil Gray says his party will fight the proposed cuts to tax credits through "every opportunity open to us". The measures would increase levels of in-work poverty, child poverty and threaten "social cohesion" in every part of the UK, he argues.

Working families "utterly dependent on tax credits to stop them falling below the breadline" will have no time to adjust under the current timetable, he says, and must be compensated in full if the changes do go ahead. 

The Daily Politics

Shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith and Conservative MP David Davis spoke to Jo Coburn on the Daily Politics about the Monday night vote on tax credits in the House of Lords, and how the government has handled its proposed changes to welfare.

By defying the Commons over tax credits, Tory MP Michael Ellis says the Lords has "broken" a series of parliamentary conventions which have "worked well for the past 100 years" and, in his view, will "live to regret it". The Conservatives were elected with a majority in May and yet the "Lords think they know better", a situation which he says cannot be allowed to continue. Some MPs and peers have privately been critical of the way George Osborne has handled the issue but Mr Ellis defends his approach, saying using a statutory instrument to implement the changes is "perfectly legitimate". 

Our number crunchers here have been doing their sums about the amount of times the government has been defeated in its first six months and how that compares with previous administrations. After last night, the government has suffered 19 defeats since May. The coalition government lost only 10 votes in the entire 2014-5 parliamentary year although this was a shorter year as Parliament was truncated by the general election. A fairer comparison, perhaps, would be with 2013-4 when the Tory-Lib Dem coalition was defeated 14 times in the whole year. But the figures do show that the Lords is no respecter of party affiliation when it comes to giving governments a bloody nose. The last Labour government was defeated 88 times in 2002-3, having lost only two votes in 2000-1. The most defeated government in recent history, however, was Harold Wilson's Labour adminstration, which lost 126 votes in 1975-6. 

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Conservative peer Lord Forsyth says talk of a constitutional crisis between the Lords and Commons after last night's events is overstated. He tells the BBC it was a "mistake" to introduce the tax credit changes through a statutory instrument rather than primary legislation. The focus, he says, now should be on reforming the Lords' powers, by, for instance, allowing the Upper House to be able to amend secondary legislation in future, rather than creating a whole load of new peers, a move he said would be "insane". 

But former chancellor Ken Clarke says the Lords had "cheerily put on hold" £4bn of proposed spending cuts, describing this as "real potatoes". If it continues to frustrate the elected government over a range of issues, he says it will be "very difficult to govern" and there could be a "serious problem". 

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Labour MP Frank Field, chair of the work and pensions committee, says the tax credit situation is a "mess" and one of the problems facing George Osborne is that he "doesn't have the data" to hand to tell him how much he would save if he changed course, for instance by raising the threshold at which the cuts would kick in, applying the cuts only to new claimants or making more minor "tweaks". While it is "immensely popular to hand out money and it can achieve key objectives", he says he was always concerned there would be a "day of reckoning" over the tax credit system and everyone should now be flexible in trying to find a solution.