The ten things you need to know on Friday 10 May 2013... 1) CRACKS IN THE COALITION 48 hours after the Queen's Speech, how coalitious is the c...

Iain Duncan Smith has been rebuked for falsely claiming the coalition's controversial benefits cap had already caused 8,000 people to move into jobs. ...

The work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has been accused of "misrepresenting" statistics on welfare to falsely praise the the effects of the...

Perhaps it is fair to say that Cameron doesn't really consider religious values unless he has been asked to give a speech defending their importance.

Highly vulnerable households risk being harmed by the government's "populist" benefit cap, the woman appointed by David Cameron to get families back i...

The government's benefit cap may create a "couple penalty" in the welfare system, encouraging spouses and partners to live apart, a leading economic t...

There are better, fairer and far more effective solutions to managing our spiralling welfare benefit bill. We should turn our attention to those and away from blind retribution. I am left, however, with a burning question. Why am I the one raising this. Where is the Labour Party?

From time to time, disaffected Labour voters ask what the Labour Party is for. Even committed Labourites like ourselves feel it is an important question to ask.

Usually one has to tune into the Jeremy Kyle Show to hear as plentiful a flow of populist, self-righteous, ill-thought diarrhoea as that which emanated from the government yesterday. Indignation was the mot-de-jour for assorted ministers, wheeled out to express their incredulity at the latest defeat in the Lords.

The government has been defeated in the House of Lords after Bishops succeeded in amending the Welfare Reform Bill to exempt child benefit from a maxi...

The latest hammer to fall in the vast experiment in human despair which the coalition calls an economic policy is a cap on welfare benefits of £500 per week per family. This is assuming it passes through the Lords, of course, which at time of writing is still to vote on it.

Just look at the evidence, they cry. Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, fulminating against turbulent priests at the weekend in good Thatcher-era style, spluttered that there are people living in expensive houses claiming unemployment benefits.

After basic expenses - rent, council tax and utilities - it turns out that the government expects people to live on 62p per day. That is physically impossible.

Iain Duncan Smith has insisted his welfare reform plans are not designed to "punish", as he vowed the proposed cap on benefits will not make children ...