The SNP are today appealing to Labour and Conservative MPs to vote against the Welfare Reform and Work Bill when it returns to the House of Commons on Tuesday.

However, Labour could support cuts to tax credits if "real protection" is given to low-income families, John McDonnell said as a Cabinet minister hinted at concessions by George Osborne to soften the impact.
 
This is the last opportunity for MPs to vote on the bill which includes extensive changes to welfare benefits and major cuts to tax credits and makes up the majority of George Osborne’s £12 billion welfare benefit savings.

Commenting, the SNP’s Westminster spokesperson for Fair Work and Employment Neil Gray MP said: “Children living in low-income families will be hit the hardest by the Tories’ ideological austerity agenda but even on the government benches there are people who are realising the devastating impact these cuts will have.
 
“When the Welfare Reform and Work Bill returns to the House of Commons on Tuesday we have one last chance to stop these cuts and the SNP are appealing to both Labour and Tory MPs about the impact these cuts will have on their constituents and vote against the bill.
 
“Research from the House of Commons Library shows that the cost of the bill to Scotland’s low income families will be £3.2 billion by 2020/21. In 2020/21 the annual cut will reach £900 million every year.
 
“And as the measures in this bill only accounts for 86% of the cuts announced by the Chancellor in his summer budget we can see that by the time of the next general election Scotland will be facing over £1 billion welfare cuts each and every year.
 
"Over half a million children live in families that rely on tax credits to make ends meet. 350,000 of those children will feel the impact of Tory cuts as they strip away much needed tax credits from over 200,000 low income working families across Scotland.
 
"The Tories know their policies will make child poverty spiral not reduce.  David Cameron is not overseeing an all-out assault on poverty with these measures but is instead launching an all-out assault on the poor.”

However, Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell said that if peers throw out the £4.4 billion welfare squeeze, the Opposition will not make "political capital" from any U-turn over the key plank of the Government's austerity policy.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan defended the policy, which she insisted was in line with the Conservative's general election pitch despite apparent pledges during the campaign to spare working tax credits.

She warned peers not to make a "constitutionally unprecedented" power grab by rejecting a financial measure that had already been approved by the Commons.

The "broad package" including a higher minimum wage and increases in income tax personal allowance would offset the losses, she said - expected to reach up to £1,300 a year for millions of households.

But amid a growing chorus of senior Tories demanding action to soften the impact, she suggested measures to mitigate the effect could be put in place - perhaps in Mr Osborne's Autumn Statement on November 25.

"The Chancellor's track record has very much been about supporting, in Budgets, working families," she told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show.

"I was a Treasury minister in the last Parliament, George was my boss at that point. He very much is always in listening mode."

She added: "Not the main policy, the Prime Minister has been very clear that the policy is not going to change."

"People are of course going to be worried ... but I think it's a question of working through all the numbers. But what is the alternative? We have to get the economy straight."

Peers will vote on Monday on a Labour motion to refuse to approve the measure unless the Government sets out "full transitional protection for a minimum of three years" for existing claimants.

Ministers are urging critics instead to back a motion tabled by Church of England bishops that would express "regret" at the failure to consider the impact but let the cuts go ahead.

Liberal Democrats are pushing a "fatal" motion that would kick out the policy entirely.

Mr McDonnell has written to Mr Osborne urging him to promise changes.

"It is a real offer to the Government, to George Osborne, to see if we can actually make sure people are properly protected and that at the right time, if there is a way of reducing tax credits, of course we will cooperate with them in that respect," he told the programme.

Joking about the flak he endured for reversing a decision to back the Chancellor's fiscal charter, he said: "I have written to George Osborne today to say 'I know what a U-turn looks like and how it can damage you but we need a U-turn on this one.

"So I have said to him 'look, if you can change your mind on this we will not make any political capital out of this'.

"If the Lords do throw this out tomorrow and put it back to the Government, I have said to him 'if you change your mind and bring back a policy in which people are protected - not a political stunt but a real protection, we will not in any way attack you for that, in fact we will support you."

He said: "These are people who go to work, look after their kids, do everything asked of them and they are going to lose, on average, about £1,300 a year. 200,000 people could be forced into poverty."

Mr McDonnell - sitting beside Ms Morgan in the studio - said he expected the Education Secretary "to be one of my allies behind the scenes that convinces George to turn on this issue".

"She knows that teaching assistants, for example, they are going to lose £1,300, £1,800 some of them. School secretaries £2,000."

Ms Morgan told him: "I expect to be called many things but I'm not sure I'm one of your allies on this."

In his letter, Mr McDonnell said Mr Osborne should "drop this policy completely".

"It can't be a fudge. Not some partial reversal that scores cheap headlines, yet leaves people still worse off or lands another burden on middle and low earners or the poorest in our society," he told the Chancellor.

"I am appealing to you to put the interests of these 3 million families ahead of any concerns you may have about losing face and ahead of petty party politics.

"If you do, I promise you personally and publicly that if you U-turn and reverse this decision fairly and in full, I will not attack you for it."

The leader of the Scottish Tories became the latest senior figure to demand a rethink, warning the present policy would cause unacceptable "suffering" for poorer families.

Highly-popular Ruth Davidson said it was wrong that claimants faced a "cliff edge" when their state help was slashed in April - before any benefits are felt of a higher minimum wage.

"The aim is sound, but we can't have people suffering on the way," she told the Mail on Sunday.

"The idea that there's a cliff edge in April before the uptake in wages comes in is a real practical human problem and the Government needs to look again at it."

Mr Osborne insisted this week he was "comfortable" with the policy despite analysis by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that the introduction of a higher minimum wage will not offset poor households' immediate losses.

MPs have voted twice in favour of the cuts but senior Tories including David Davis and London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith have joined forces with Labour's former welfare minister Frank Field on a cross-party motion calling for action to protect poorer families.

Although Thursday's Commons vote is non-binding, a significant rebellion would heap further pressure on Mr Osborne to act.

Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg told BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics it would be "perfectly proper for the Queen to agree to create more peers if the Lords breaks an extremely long-standing convention" by rejecting a financial measure already approved by the Commons.

Ms Morgan said peers should be "mindful of what they are doing".

"It's constitutionally unprecedented to strike down a statutory instrument," she added - bemoaning the tendency of the upper house to inflict defeats on the Government.

"It's a revising chamber. Often they do make good points. But they are striking down 70% of the votes that they're having.

"They've already made it more difficult for us on childcare, for example."

She said the Cabinet was "absolutely united in the need to get our welfare budget under control" and insisted she had not been involved in any discussions over ways to soften its impact.

The party had been "straight with the country" before the election, she said, suggesting Mr Cameron had said "the level is going to stay the same" and it was qualifying thresholds that were being revised.

Labour, she said, was "not able to set out a credible alternative today to making these changes".

Tory former cabinet minister Lord Heseltine said peers were "playing with fire" by threatening to block the reforms."

"There is quite clearly a view in the House of Commons which has been expressed in several divisions about this measure and for the House of Lords to dig in and say, look, we won't have it, will really raise the most profound constitutional issues which can't be in anyone's interests.

"Let's have no doubt, the Commons are going to win this issue one way or another but the most likely losers are the House of Lords themselves who will find their powers curtailed or stripped or whatever it may be."