PUTTING aside all of the constitutional dramas raised by the actions of the unelected House of Lords diving into the financial matters of the country, and discounting the inaccuracies of some of the speeches delivered by the appointed nobility, please be in no doubt that the necessary reform of tax credits will be managed by your elected representatives.

It is always incredibly difficult to reform benefits and there is no perfect system for implementation so I am glad that the Chancellor has said he will look again at the timing of the changes.

But for me there is simply no alternative to changing a system that meant nine of ten families in Britain were receiving tax credits in 2010 – and fraud and error in the system was costing billions a year – all based on a mad merry go round of the Government taking your money, filtering it through an inefficient government machine and then paying it back in benefits.

The result of this is our high-welfare, high-tax, and low-wage economy, which is hardly a recipe for long-term success, especially when it is based on unsustainable borrowings that just leave our children with our debts to pay off.

So we have a balanced plan to move to a lower-welfare, lower-tax and higher-wage economy, based on a combination of the new National Living Wage, reformed tax credits and lower taxes that taken together with other benefit changes and tax cuts means a typical family with someone working full time on the minimum wage will be over £2,400 a year better off by 2020.

This plan also means our economy will be back in the black, which of course allows us to invest in public services like the NHS and build for Britain’s future. That is why it is right to make these changes, but to be careful of the pace of implementation.

For me, the saddest part of the whole debate is the extent to which our church leaders rarely welcome progress. Progress such as our world-leading 0.7 per cent international aid commitment, the raising of taxable allowances to take the lowest paid out of tax all together, the largest increase ever in state pensions, or the unprecedented investment in our NHS; the legislation to ban forced marriage and to prevent modern day slavery.

A more rounded view that recognises all of this progress, the need for society to be fair to those who give as well as receive, and the immorality of burdening our children with our debts, would be very welcome.