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On 3 February, the House of Commons will vote on whether to support the introduction of a series of caps on the amount that payday and home credit lenders can charge for credit.

The motion has gained widespread cross-party support from MPs who recognise that the Government has a duty to intervene in the high-cost credit market, which is uncompetitive and often exploitative.

If enough MPs turn up on 3 February and vote for the motion, it will send a clear message to the Government that they need to act.

Dear Ed, 

It's your first full week in your new job. Congratulations! Things change so quickly in politics. One minute it's all about counting inmates – the next, you're counting income tax.

Last week we announced our New Year Annual Lecture which was fully booked in just a few days. This week we announce Compass' Spring Debate, organised in partnership with Soundings. We recommend you register now to guarantee a place.

Our New Year Annual Lecture will be delivered by Professor David Marquand. Since announcing the lecture last week the event is now fully booked, however we will announce if any further tickets become available due to cancellations. The lecture is entitled ‘A realignment of the mind - what way forward for progressive politics?' and will take place on Thursday 10 February from 6.30pm-8pm in the Mandela Room, The Commonwealth Club, 25 Northumberland Avenue, London WC2N 5AP.

I enjoyed debating ‘stuff' with Claire Fox on Woman's Hour this week. Claire is one of the few prominent commentators who consider ‘stuff' from a broad economic and political perspective rather than getting wholly hooked on bins (although they did come up). We came to fundamentally different conclusions, however.

Campaigners concerned about proposed cuts to free legal advice will converge on Westminster on Wednesday 12 January for the official launch of the Justice for All campaign.

The Compass Youth Committee has voted to support keeping the current membership arrangements within Compass. I am confident that we made the correct decision in deciding this. We felt the benefits of the current arrangements outweighed any benefits of opening up voting to members of other political parties. Compass's strength has been to provide a coherent voice for the mainstream of the party membership. We therefore believe it should continue to focus its work on building new ideas within the Labour Party.

The Compass thinkpiece,  Dark Times For Those That Cannot Work has received coverage in the Guardian newspaper. The article refers to a survey conducted by Steve Griffiths that reveals up to 500,000 people have been wrongly judged fit for work and disallowed incapacity benefit over the past 15 years.

Ed Miliband is steadying the Labour ship. A win on school sports and support for electoral reform has been followed by a hard strike on the VAT rise. Recognising that 71% of voters didn't back Labour and new support has to come from somewhere, he has wisely opened up to the Liberal Democrats. Miliband also knows that Labour can win, or rather he knows that the Tory-led government can lose.

British politics are in a strange place - one where while some of the landscape remains the same so much is different. All of the three main parties have been disorientated by the result of the election and coalition along with the scale of the crisis.