HUMZA Yousaf has urged Anas Sarwar to tell Keir Starmer to “do another U-turn” and commit to scrapping the two-child benefit cap.
The First Minister weighed in on the row over the Conservatives' benefit cap, introduced by then-chancellor George Osborne in 2017, after the UK Labour leader said he was “not changing that policy” if the party wins the next General Election.
Earlier Sarwar made a ridiculous excuse for Starmer’s U-turn by claiming changing the policy would risk a repeat of the disastrous Liz Truss mini-budget and “spook the markets”.
Starmer previously pledged to scrap the policy during the race to become Labour leader.
It comes as Plaid Cymru urged Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford to call out Starmer on the “cruel” benefit cap.
The policy has been repeatedly blamed for pushing families into poverty, with senior Scottish Labour MSPs demanding that Starmer change his position.
Now, the First Minister (pictured above) has joined in on calls for Labour to scrap the two-child limit.
He said: “The two-child limit is cruel and should be binned.
"If @AnasSarwar truly has any influence with UK Labour, he will tell Starmer to do another U-turn & scrap it.
“Retaining the two-child limit is a deliberate policy choice to keep children in poverty.”
Earlier, SNP MSP Collette Stevenson said Labour “can never justify” U-turning to support a “cruel policy” that is pushing families and children into poverty.
“Their current chaotic policy decision-making has left their own members criticising this recent U-turn,” she said.
In Wales, Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said that Starmer had chosen to adopt a “cruel Tory policy” and urged Drakeford (below) to speak out against it.
“If the First Minister truly wants to fix child poverty, he will urge Starmer to reconsider today,” he added.
“Let’s prioritise children’s wellbeing over political expediency.”
On Monday, Sarwar claimed there were fears of repeating the financial mismanagement imposed by Truss and then-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, which saw inflation rise, the pound collapse and a hike to mortgage interest rates.
He insisted that scrapping the controversial benefit limit on parents with more than two children could “spook the markets”.
"We are not going to be able to fix everything straight away and we’re not going to be able to do everything that we want to do or need to do because of the state of that financial crisis,” Sarwar said.
On Monday, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said that the party must be “clear about what we can fund” as controversy over Starmer’s comments grew.
Cooper said that Labour initially opposed the policy when it was introduced, but added: “And we have pointed out a whole series of different things that the Conservatives have done that are damaging, but we’ve also been really clear that anything that we say has got to be funded.”
We previously told how Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Jackie Baillie compared the two-child benefit cap to China’s “abhorrent” one-child policy during a poverty debate in Holyrood in 2018.
