Labour UK Government moving towards scrapping two-child benefit cap
There are strong signs that the UK Government is finally going to abolish the two-child benefit cap.
The policy - which limits families to receiving Universal Credit or child tax credit for the first two children only - was a cost-saving measure first announced by Tory chancellor George Osborne as part of his austerity plans in 2015 and introduced under Theresa May in 2017.
Charities like the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) have long argued that scrapping it would be the single most effective move to reduce child poverty.
In an analysis published just last week, CPAG said a lone parent with three children who works full-time for the minimum wage was currently £4,500 a year under the poverty line if affected by the two-child limit. If the policy were scrapped, that worker would be £1,000 a year under the line.
Former prime minister Gordon Brown has called for the policy to be scrapped, as has Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.
Up until now the government has talked of ending the cap when economic conditions allow. And when Labour MPs forced a climbdown on planned disability benefit cuts earlier this year, commentators suggested it had pushed back the prospect of scrapping the two-child limit.
But now the issue seems to be back on the agenda and could be part of the Budget which Chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver in November.
Bridget Philipson, the Cabinet candidate for Labour’s deputy leadership, has said she wants a mandate “to make tackling child poverty the unbreakable moral mission of this Labour government”.
She continued: “ "We should never forget that it was the Conservatives who introduced the two-child cap, a spiteful attack on children who were punished and pushed into hardship through no fault of their own. I have said time and again that a Labour government would never have implemented it."
Lucy Powell, the other deputy leadership contender, has also indicated her support for scrapping the cap.
According to CPAG, removing the two-child limit would lift 350,000 children out of poverty and mean another 700,000 were not in such deep poverty.
It will come at a cost, but a rich country like ours cannot continue deliberately to deny hundreds of thousands of children many of the basic things most people take for granted.