Tonight:
9°c
Alistair Darling promised more help for the low paid today as Labour MPs threatened to inflict a defeat on the Government over the 10p tax furore.
The Chancellor went to a weekly private meeting of Labour MPs last night and appealed to them to back away from the rebellion. He pledged to look again for ways to help losers in this autumn's pre-Budget report, the last before the election. Today he told the Standard he would "continue to do everything we can" to assist low earners.
However with a vote on the Budget on a knife-edge, ministers were being rushed back to Westminster. Labour whips say the rebellion is being joined by MPs who want to "give a bloody nose" to Gordon Brown, whose leadership is still in doubt.
Tonight's vote comes more than two years after Mr Brown scrapped the ultra-low tax rate for the poorest paid in his final Budget as Chancellor. The move helped fund a 2p cut in income tax that benefited better off groups.
Thirty Labour MPs backed a public call for more cash help for losers - it would take only 32 rebels to inflict a humiliating defeat.
Mr Darling said: "Ninety per cent of households are fully compensated and 800,000 of those on the lowest incomes have been taken out of tax."
Critics say 1.3 million of the least well off are still £1 a week poorer. Rebel ringleader Frank Field, the former welfare reform minister, said: "This is the last chance Labour MPs have before a general election to rectify this injustice."
