David Cameron "lied" to voters during the general election campaign when he was asked if the Conservative Party would cut tax credits, a Labour MP has said.
Dawn Butler told the BBC's Daily Politics programme on Monday that while she was not allowed to accuse the prime minister of lying in the Commons, there was nothing to stop her doing on TV.
"David Cameron lied. You lied. There are almost 14,000 households in Brent that would be affected by this change," she said.
Addressing Conservative MP Liam Fox, she added: "[He] lied about taking away people's tax credits. He said he would not touch tax credits and yet still you are doing just that. You lied to the electorate."
In April, Cameron told a TV election debate audience he had no plans to cut tax credits. George Osborne announced cuts to child tax credits in July.
Fox rejected Butler's claim. "Our job is to make sure the country moves forward economically that we get more people in work," he said. "We've got to do what we think is right for the country in the longer term."
Butler said while parliamentary rules prevented her from calling the prime minister a liar, that did not stop her from doing it on TV. "On your show I can say it as it it is and I have done," she said.
Cameron and Osborne are under pressure to abandon or soften the cuts from Labour and several Tory MPs who fear the effects they will have on working people.
The Huffington Post UK has learned the government’s tax credit cuts could be stopped in their tracks under a last-ditch plan being plotted by cross-party campaigners.
A rarely-used ‘fatal motion’ is set to be tabled in the House of Lords this week, followed by a vote next week, with the specific intention of preventing Osborne from putting his controversial £4bn proposals into law.
The prime minister recently insisted on Newsnight he had not misled voters during the campaign as the cuts only affected "new families", not existing families.
Presenter Evan Davis suggested the Cameron's failure to make clear before the election that tax credits would be cut for some was "the kind of thing that gives politics a bad name".
Labour's shadow chancellor John McDonnell yesterday afternoon revealed Labour would reverse the Tory cuts to tax credits – despite two Shadow Cabinet members being unable to give the same guarantee just hours earlier.