Labour 'bought votes' with tax credits says IDS The result of all of this is that the debt we all had to pay off was costing us £30,000 every single minute. That was what we had to pay as a result of this expenditure. The Work and Pensions Secretary said Labour ministers believe that "helping people is about trapping more and more people in benefits." "What is really interesting is that under the tax credit system, nine out of ten families with children were eligible for tax credits," Mr Duncan Smith said. This went in some cases up to over £70,000 in earnings. What a ridiculous nonsense they have created. The benefits cap is part of moves by Chancellor George Osborne to cut a further £3.7 billion from the welfare bill. Coalition ministers insist the vulnerable will still be protected as disability benefits and handouts to carers will rise in line with inflation. Ahead of the vote on the Bill, Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne called the changes a "strivers" tax" that he said does "nothing but punish working families." The legislation showed "who is being asked to pick up the bill" for Mr Osborne's "catastrophic economic failure," Mr Byrne said. "Millionaires will have £107,000 more from next year to help them heat the swimming pool," he said. It's not Britain's millionaires who are picking up the tab, it is Britain's working families. This Bill is a strivers' tax, pure and simple. Former Liberal Democrat minister Sarah Teather also said she would vote against the measures. Miss Teather hit out at the way the arguments over the below-inflation rise had been characterised as a division between "shirkers and strivers." "A fissure already exists between the working and non-working poor," the Brent Central MP said. Hammering on that faultline with the language of shirkers and strivers will have long-term impacts on public attitudes, on attitudes of one neighbour against another. It will make society less generous, less sympathetic, less able to co-operate. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, later criticised the Conservatives for "attacking people who are out of work." "I shall be voting for the welfare bill as my colleagues in government will be and I think almost all of my parliamentary colleagues," he told Sky News. We do accept these extremely hard times and we're going to have to look at welfare as well as other things. What I haven't appreciated is [the] language from some of our colleagues in the Coalition on the other side attacking people who are out of work, I think, in an unacceptable way. We don't agree with the stigma which is being attached to people who are unemployed.