David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn clash over tax credits at PM's questions
The PM announces a review of children's residential care
Cameron is heading to Iceland for talks set to focus on EU membership
Iain Duncan Smith says jobs advisers are being placed in food banks
It's gone 11:30 GMT, which means it's time for today's Daily Politics (which you can watch on BBC 2, or by clicking on the Live Coverage tab above). On today's programme are housing minister minister Brandon Lewis and shadow minister Jon Ashworth.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has told MPs that by around June 2018 there will be no new claimants of tax credits.
DWP Permanent Secretary Robert Devereux explained to the Work and Pensions Committee that the withdrawal of tax credits would take effect across the country in different stages as Universal Credit is rolled out.
From the Commons committee hearing
Maihri Black, SNP MP, argues that welfare powers should be fully devolved to Scotland but Iain Duncan Smith says the UK government has said it would implement the Smith Commission recommendations on further Scottish devolution, which suggested handing powers on disability and employment benefits to Holyrood. He adds:
Quote MessageThese are quite substantial changes in devolved powers that will go to Scotland."
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Victoria Derbyshire
Ben Wright: David Cameron's Iceland trip
BBC political editor tweets...
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Andrew Neil and Jo Coburn will have live coverage of Prime Minister's Questions.
They are joined by Housing Minister Brandon Lewis and shadow minister without portfolio Jonathan Ashworth to discuss the prime minister's visit to Iceland and the latest on tax credits.
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After PMQs, Times columnist Matthew Syed claims in a film that politicians often refuse to admit they have got something wrong and that means they are not learning from their mistakes. He will debate this film (below) around 12:40 GMT with the guest MPs.
Health service 'should learn from mistakes' says Matthew Syed
Quote Message"That's why preventable medical error is one of the biggest killers in the UK - it kills way more people than traffic accidents"
Matthew Syed, Times columnist
Laura Kuenssberg: Cameron's Iceland message
Iain Duncan Smith was asked by Labour committee member Emma Lewell-Buck if he was aware that some people had taken their own lives because of the benefit sanctions and was asked why his department was "refusing" to do a proper review.
The work and pensions secretary said there was a review of jobs seekers' allowance by Matthew Oakely, and added: "I don’t accept your assertion that these things are directly linked. These are tragedies in their own right and they are often complex and individual cases."
Quote MessageSanctions have been part of the benefit system for some time. Under the last Labour government they were accepted as part of the benefits system. I always accepted them and always recognised there were issues occasionally and problems but I didn’t go around accusing the Labour government of running a system that somehow ended up in the way that you are making this allegation."
Personal details of thousands of British people are up for sale on the dark web, according to senior government officials.
A Whitehall security official told the Financial Times, external that personal details, including bank account information could be bought for $30 on average. The price increases depending the wealth of the person whose details have been stolen.
The article also said: "Thousands of detailed profiles stolen from the government’s own computer systems, with all the information necessary to completely seize control of an individual’s digital identity."
Mike Driver, director general of finance at the Department for Work and Pensions, says benefit fraud and error is at its lowest rate since 2004-5. He says the department is working closely with the National Audit Office to get a "better understanding" of what is driving fraud and error in each of the benefits.
A report published by the Commons Public Accounts Committee today has said that despite fraud and error in tax credit payments falling from 8.1% of total spend in 2010-11 to 4.4% in 2013-4, £4.6bn was still overpaid to claimants.
After being defeated in the House of Lords yesterday on proposed cuts to tax credits, Chancellor George Osborne said he would try to “lessen the impact on families during the transition” possibly by reducing his budget surplus target.
He also backed a review in to the House of Lords. The Financial Times, external reported a spokesman for the government saying the review would "examine how to protect the ability of elected governments to secure their business in parliament."
Giving evidence to MPs on the Department for Work and Pensions' annual report, Secretary of State Iain Duncan Smith says they are are trialling posting job advisers in foodbanks.
Quote MessageWe're already getting very strong feedback about that, where they'll be able to check if somebody comes in and says 'I haven't had a payment or I haven't received this' - they can immediately check... If this works... I think we'd like to roll this out across the whole of the UK."
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The Daily Telegraph
William Hague, former foreign secretary, has criticised the power of the Liberal Democrat peers in the House of Lords. Writing in theTelegraph, external, he said: "If Lloyd George could see his party this week he would not only turn in his grave but jump out of it."
Quote MessageOf the scores of democracies I have visited over the last decade, I cannot think of one where an unelected chamber can change or veto the tax proposals of an elected government, however strongly they may feel."
Hague will be joining the Lords next month as part of a new batch of peers announced by David Cameron earlier this year.
Meanwhile The Sun reports, external the possibility of the current leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Stowell, being replaced with a "Tory big hitter" naming William Hague as someone to take on the job.
Conservative Home
At grassroots Conservative website Conservative Home, editor Paul Goodman suggests the focus on the setbacks the government is having in the Lords over its tax credit reforms is to "look at the problem the wrong way round".
He says , externalGeorge Osborne's tax credits plans would've been watered down even if the Lords hadn't voted against them - because "the pressure to make those changes, and thus ease up on the £4.4bn saving that the Chancellor had pencilled in, was coming from the Commons".
Among the Tory MPs unhappy about, and outspoken against, the cuts are party "big beasts"
Quote MessageIf those MPs had not agitated and briefed (in which latter occupation they were joined by some ministers) Lady Hollis and her Labour colleagues might not have acted as they did, searching for a vote formula that fell short of rejecting the changes altogether but well ahead of one that simply expressed disapproval. But whether they would have or not, Cameron and Osborne’s problem in the Commons would have remained."
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Baroness Hayman, an independent crossbench peer, said Statutory Instruments - the mechanism used by the government to introduce the tax credit changes - needed reviewing.
Quote MessageI don’t think it's satisfactory when major issues of policy are brought through with the very limited scrutiny that’s possible for the Commons on the Lords under a statutory instrument.”
She also said she didn't think the vote in the Lords on Monday changed anything constitutionally. "I don’t think it was a huge innovation, it was a large political statement."
Today Programme
BBC Radio 4
Image source, Parliamentary CopyrightFormer Conservative Party leader Michael (now Lord) Howard (pictured above in a portrait from 2008) and former Lords Speaker Baroness Hayman were on the Today programme earlier, discussing the government's defeat in the Lords over tax credits.
Following the set back, the government has announced a review into the workings of Parliament, led by former Conservative leader of the Lords Lord Strathclyde.
Lord Howard welcomed the move, saying "greater clarity" was needed. "The House of Commons has to have its primacy recognised, it has to be able to have its way," he said.
