How much will it cost?

Labour’s original plan to reform the welfare system was a hasty effort to try to make billions of pounds of cuts to a rapidly growing bill in order to help the chancellor meet her self-imposed rules on government borrowing.

But this latest U-turn raises significant questions about just how stability and credibility-enhancing it really is to tweak financial plans every six months to hit budget targets that change frequently due to a variety of reasons, including things such as the cost of borrowing which the government cannot control.

The latest deal suggests the welfare reforms will only save £2bn a year rather than the £5bn they were expected to save by 29-30.

The planned cut to disability personal independent payment (Pip) eligibility was set to raise the bulk of this saving, £4.5bn….