What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Iain Duncan Smith was accused of “callous disregard” for victims of his hated Bedroom Tax yesterday after he dodged a Commons debate by dashing off to Paris.

The Eurosceptic Work and Pensions Secretary was happy to scuttle across the Channel for once as MPs spoke of the distress and heartache caused by the policy in his own back yard.

Labour’s Rachel Reeves accused the former Tory leader of snubbing 420,000 disabled people clobbered by the tax.

The shadow Work and Pensions Secretary told MPs: “He doesn’t want to answer to this House or the British people for the distress and damage he is causing.”

(Image: The Picture Library Ltd.)

A Labour source said he was “running scared”.

And at the presidential palace in the French capital, Mr Duncan Smith had no regrets about skipping the debate.

“I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you!” he shouted constantly as a Mirror reporter fired questions at him.

After choosing to go to a youth unemployment conference in France, Mr Duncan Smith explained: “I am not there because I am here.”

Not a single member of the Cabinet was on the frontbench to defend the policy.

Junior ministers sat there as Labour MPs told how the Bedroom Tax had taken money from patients needing kidney dialysis, the terminally ill and vulnerable families.

Shockingly, some Tories in the Commons were joking among themselves as Jack Dromey MP told how his Birmingham constituent and mother of two Stephanie Bottrill had committed suicide as a result of the tax.

Ms Reeves praised the hundreds of campaigners who had come to Parliament to tell how the policy had affected them.

She said: “I hope members will have a chance to meet people today who came to Parliament to tell their story. As they got off their trains and coaches in London, the Secretary of State was already on the Eurostar scuttling across the Channel.”

She continued: “Isn’t it the case that the Secretary of State doesn’t want to answer for the waste and chaos in his department, his failure to deliver the great welfare reform he promised, his failure to get more people into work and his failure to get the benefits bill down? We ask members to consult their consciences and consult their constituents and call a halt to the havoc their heartless policies have unleashed.”

A plea from Labour frontbencher Stephen Pound about his brother left Tory MPs looking at the floor in shame.

He said: “There is a young man who lives in Earls Court who is in total renal failure. May I tell you that this man’s spare bedroom is a dialysis unit. He has been told that he now has to pay the Bedroom Tax. He is very happy with the efforts of his MP, not of my political persuasion, to attempt to free him from the chains of the Bedroom Tax.

“But my brother now faces losing his home of 20 years for being a kidney patient. Do you not agree that this is beyond disgrace?”

Mr Pound declined to name his brother but said the MP trying to help was Conservative Sir Malcolm Rifkind.

Other Labour MPs lashed out at the Government for failing to stump up enough cash to help victims of the tax, who have lost £14 a week on average. The Government said it had given an extra £30million to a Discretionary Housing Payment fund. But MPs said this was not enough to cover those affected.

The policy, introduced in April, means those in council or housing association property with one or more spare rooms lose benefit, unless they downsize.

But recent research found 96% of victims have not been able to find a smaller property and must pay the tax.

In the absence of Mr Duncan Smith – who lives rent-free in a £2million mansion owned by his wife’s family – it was left to junior Lib Dem minister Steve Webb to answer for the Government.

Ms Reeves said: “I say shame on him and shame on his party. We say that it is time to stop this cruel and mad policy. It is time for Members on both sides of the House to take a stand.

“It is time to stand with the desperate families who are being forced out of their homes or forced into debt.”

But Tories lined up to support the tax.

Conservative David TC Davies said Labour MPs were shedding “crocodile tears” over the misery of constituents. He ranted that “feckless fathers” should be put in chains and made to work to pay for their children’s upbringing.

Fellow Tory MP Therese Coffey said victims could work an extra three hours to replace the money they have lost.

But Mr Webb came under attack from his own Lib Dem MPs.

St Ives MP Andrew George said: “It victimises the most marginalised in our communities, undermines family life and penalises the hard-working low-paid for being prepared to stomach low-paid work. It masks the excessive cost and disruption to those disabled who have to move from expensively adapted homes and is in my view Dickensian in social divisiveness.

“It’s an immoral policy.”

Five Lib Dem MPs, Greg Mulholland, Ian Swales, Adrian Sanders, Roger Williams and John Leech have signed a motion saying the spare room subsidy was “flawed” and a “mistake”.

The Labour motion calling for the tax to be axed lost by 252 to 226, cutting the coalition majority from 75 to 26.