Liberal Democrat Lords will attempt to defeat proposed tax credit cuts, the party’s UK leader has revealed.
Tim Farron told the Scottish Liberal Democrat conference in Dunfermline on Saturday that his members in the House of Lords would raise a “fatal motion” in a bid to block the changes.
He accused David Cameron of having “lied” by saying there would be no cuts during the general election campaign.
In a direct challenge to the Prime Minister’s warning that peers should obey the Lords convention of not blocking financial policies approved by MPs, Mr Farron told him: “Stuff the convention.”
In a briefing to journalists following his Fife speech, Mr Farron described the Salisbury convention and second convention that Lords do not block government finance business as “more guidelines rather than exact rules”.
And he said he would “take great pleasure” in hoisting David Cameron by his own petard by using the unelected Lords to block government legislation.
In an unscripted intervention during his speech, Mr Farron said: “This cruel, heartless, mean-spirited and misjudged policy is George Osborne’s poll tax and we will fight it as we fought the poll tax. It will not stand. Not on our watch.”
He added: “Give me the choice of abiding by a 70-year-old establishment deal or standing up for three million low-income families; I know whose side we are on.”