Plans to charge single parents for access to the replacement for the Child Support Agency could worsen child poverty, MPs have warned. The Public Accounts Committee also expressed concern that the charges for the new Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission were being used to cover a shortfall in its budget. 

Plans to make a further £25bn worth of welfare cuts are "nonsense", a Work and Pensions department source has told the Financial Times. David Cameron was presented with the proposals, for slashing benefits and pushing people from part-time into full-time work, by departing No. 10 adviser Steve Hilton, according to reports. However a source close to Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith rebuked the plans, saying there was no room left for such steep cuts at the department.

The Government will cut its funding to help fuel poor families by almost a third, prompting critics to accuse the Coalition of abandoning poorer households. The report, realised today, shows £540m will be spent on improving the energy efficiency of the homes of vulnerable people. Last year an all-party Parliamentary group said it would take £4bn a year to solve the problem.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is "demonising" disabled people, his opposite number Liam Byrne claimed this afternoon.

In a speech marking the 70th anniversary of the Beveridge Report, Mr Byrne said that "compassionate Conservatism" had given way to a "contemptuous Conservatism".

Labour sources have told PoliticsHome that there is a growing sense that the Work and Pensions Secretary has gone "too far" in his rhetoric.

The comments by the Labour MP, who this week retained his welfare portfolio in the Shadow Cabinet despite losing oversight of the party's policy review, are partly a reaction to the Secretary of State's description of workers at Remploy factories as "not doing any work... just making cups of coffee".

Mr Byrne said: "In a series of reforms that should have been approached with care and attention this government have used all the finesse of a bull in a china shop. Iain Duncan Smith is now demonising those he is failing most. Compassionate Conservatism is dead. Contemptuous Conservatism has taken its place."

The Prime Minister is considering cutting £25bn more from the welfare budget.

The Times reports that David Cameron was presented with the proposals, including a further crackdown on housing benefit and a tougher system for universal credit, by departing policy guru Steve Hilton.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is said to be supportive of some ideas, but finds the £25bn figure unfeasible, the paper claims.

The National Audit Office has said the Department for Work and Pensions "did not do enough" to monitor and prevent fraud on its welfare-to-work programmes. The NAO said that "risks still remain" of fraud due to a lack of "systemic independent checks". The news comes following the DWP's announcement that it had cancelled its Mandatory Work Activity contract with A4e in the South-East. Minister Chris Grayling said "While the team found no evidence of fraud, it identified significant weaknesses in A4e’s internal controls on the Mandatory Work Activity contract in the South-East." Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat MPs are threatening to revolt over Government plans to cut benefits to the blind. Many blind or partially-sighted people will lose their disability living allowance when it is replaced by the new personal independence payment, prompting backbenchers to demand a U-turn. 

Over a quarter of over-50s have no retirement savings, meaning they will be forced to fall back on the basic state pension of £5,587 a year, a report by insurer LV= has found.

The Department for Work and Pensions has cancelled a contract with welfare-to-work provider A4e, after an investigation found "significant weaknesses" in the company's internal processes.

The contract relates to the Mandatory Work Activity programme in the south east of England, and the company's Work Programme deals are not affected.

A probe led by the DWP and accountants Ernst and Young found "no evidence of fraud" in any A4e contracts, but in the case of the Mandatory Work Activity contracts the team found that "documentation supporting payments was seriously inadequate".

Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, welcomed the termination, but urged the DWP to investigate allegations of fraud in previous government contracts with the company.

"If you know a builder down the road has done a rotten job for a neighbour of yours, even if it’s a new job working for you, you would still want to consider whether or not to give that builder a contract.”

Eight of the company's staff have so far been arrested over allegations that they had been falsely claiming to have placed unemployed people in work.

There was more bad news for the department this morning, with the Public Accounts Committee warning that the Work Programme could waste taxpayers' money.

MPs concluded a failure to properly pilot the scheme meant there was a danger private contractors could be overpaid for work. The committee's report comes as a third charity, St Mungo’s, pulled out of the programme.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne said:

"The Government must now stop hiding performance information about the rest of its giant private sector contracts and publis so that Parliament can see whether public money is being well spent."

The Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales has told the Treasury that controversial plans to deny child benefit to families with a high earner are "seriously flawed in principle and in practice".

Ian Young, who heads the ICAEW's Tax Faculty, told BBC News this afternoon:

"I think it’s going to be very difficult the way the proposal is currently drafted to implement it and for people to comply with their new obligations.

"Basically, you’re trying to withdraw child benefit if one member of a couple earns more than £50,000 a year and the big problem is that this a non means-tested benefit which is paid to couples in respect of their children and you’re trying to claw that back potentially through the income tax system and the income tax system works by reference to the individual."

Iain Duncan Smith has said he is determined to press ahead with welfare reforms that would cut the number of disability benefit claimants by 500,000.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the Work and Pensions Secretary says the number of claimants has risen by 30% in recent years - "well ahead of any other gauge you might make about illness, sickness, disability”.

The news comes as the Government fairness watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, found that impact of spending cuts on women, disabled people and ethnic minorities had been vastly underestimated by ministers.

Millions of public sector workers could get bigger state pensions than the rest of the nation under new plans been drawn up by the Government. Under the proposals, which could cost the taxpayer £3bn a year, workers on final salary pension schemes will be allowed to build up extra pension rights worth £180 a week. According to the Sunday Times, the extra rights could mean a public sector worker on a final salary pension receives £2000 a year more in state pension than the average person.

Mothers are in line for a boost to their pensions, after Iain Duncan Smith announced that they would no longer penalised for taking time out of work to raise children. The Work and Pensions Secretary said women would be the "major winners" from the system, as from 2015, mothers will be due an average of £40 extra a week.