The House of Lords did nothing wrong when it blocked tax credit reforms, Commons Speaker John Bercow has insisted in an apparent rebuke to claims of a "constitutional crisis".
Chancellor George Osborne pointedly said during Treasury questions he had long been an advocate of electing peers and has insisted since last night's double defeat in the upper house that the Lords had overreached.
And Mr Osborne went so far as to joke about abolishing the Lords altogether in his final remarks to MPs.
Following the question session, the Speaker faced a deluge of points of order with several Tory MPs demanding he stand up for the rights of the Commons over the Lords.
But Mr Bercow replied: "I simply say this: the responsibility of the chair is for order. Nothing disorderly has occurred, there has been no procedural impropriety - that would not have been allowed.
"Whether people like what happened last night on the substance of the issue or in terms of their views on constitutionality is a matter for each and every one of them.
"In terms of where matters rest... this is now a matter for the Government to take forward as it thinks fit."
Among the protesters were former leadership contender Liam Fox (North Somerset), who questioned the "constitutional implications" of the actions of the "unelected House", while Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) highlighted the 1678 Declaration of Privilege by the Commons over the Lords on financial matters.
Before Mr Bercow's intervention and in the final salvo at Treasury Questions, SNP MP Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) questioned how much money Mr Osborne could save the exchequer by abolishing the House of Lords outright.
The question prompted Mr Osborne to quip: "That is a very decent proposal for the Autumn Statement we will give proper consideration to."
He added: "I think people who have been in Parliament with me for the last 14 years know my view is pretty clear. We should have an elected House of Lords.
"Of course that view has not prevailed in this chamber in the years I have been both on the opposition benches and the government benches.
"But I do think while we have an unelected Lords it should respect a constitutional convention which has existed for 100 years and we need to look at that now."
Earlier, the Chancellor was rebuked by furious Labour MPs.
Wes Streeting, Labour MP for Ilford North, said: "Instead of manufacturing a phoney constitutional crisis why won't he put his toys back in the pram and appreciate he needs to go back to the drawing board with his failed policy that hits working people the hardest?"
Mr Osborne replied: "We will deliver the welfare savings that we were elected to deliver in this Parliament... We will help people in the transition to that lower welfare, higher wage economy."
Meanwhile, Stewart Hosie, the SNP's economy spokesman, said: "Is it not the case... that yesterday, the 26th of October, demonstrated two things: The Chancellor has lost his political touch and his chance of being Prime Minister has just gone up in a puff of ermine-clad smoke?"
Mr Osborne said: "When pressed actually all they want to talk about is party political games rather than sorting out the mess that this country was in six or seven years ago.
"As a result of the changes we have made there are hundreds of thousands more people in Scotland with jobs, businesses are investing in Scotland as they are across the United Kingdom and we will go on making those changes."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here