Labour has come under fresh pressure to vow to scrap the two-child benefit cap after it emerged one in four children in some of England and Wales's poorest parliamentary constituencies live in families left at least £3,000 a year out of pocket as a result of the policy.
The party’s stance on the policy, which critics say has been a major driver of deepening poverty among low-income families, is estimated to affect about 1.5 million children and is seen by some in Labour as an indicator of the strength of its determination to tackle child poverty.
Keir Starmer has promised an incoming Labour government will be “laser-focused on poverty” but has so far refused to be drawn on detail such as whether it will dismantle the two-child limit, a Tory policy regarded by even some in the Conservative party as an exemplar of austerity-era cruelty.
The two-child limit bars parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017. It was designed to force parents of larger families to find a job or work more hours, but academic studies showed its main function has been to impoverish families rather than increase employment.
The backbench Labour MP Kim Johnson, who is leading a Westminster debate on the policy on Tuesday afternoon, told the Guardian while she understood Labour’s caution on spending commitments, abolition of the two-child policy must be a pillar of a “big and bold” party manifesto to tackle child poverty.
Johnson hoped the future of the two-child policy would become a key debate within the party over the coming months. “We don’t have a magic wand – this government has crashed the economy and the country is in dire straits,” she said. “It will be very difficult. But tackling poverty has to be a cornerstone of our policies.”
The policy is likely to surface at the party’s national policy forum in Nottingham later this month, when activists, unions, MPs and the leadership will debate party policy before general election preparations begin at its autumn conference.
Abolishing the two-child limit would cost £1.3bn a year but lift 250,000 children out of poverty and a further 850,000 children out of deep poverty, say campaigners. Joseph Howes, chair of the End Child Poverty Coalition, said: “It is the most cost-effective way that this, or any future, government has of reducing the number of children living in poverty.”
The parliamentary constituency of Blackley and Broughton in Manchester was worst hit by the two-child limit, with 28% of children affected, according to data collected by the End Child Poverty Coalition. In a further seven seats, at least a fifth of children were affected.
Many of the seats worst affected are in the Midlands and north of England: 12% of children living in “red wall” seats – key battlegrounds at the next election – are affected by the policy, compared to 9% outside of the red wall.
In the most ethnically diverse constituencies 14% of children are hit by the cap, compared to just 8% in the areas with least minority ethnic people, reflecting its disproportionate impact on religious and racial groups more likely to have larger families.
Almost a quarter of children in Birmingham Hodge Hill – the seat in England and Wales with the highest proportion of Muslim residents at the time of the census (62.4%) – are affected by the two-child limit.
The leading social policy academic professor Jonathan Bradshaw has called the two-child policy “the worst ever social security policy” in a crowded field going back to the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, as well as “morally odious” and “vindictively conceived”.
The two-child policy was even disparaged by Lord Freud, an austerity-era Conservative welfare minister, who last year called it “vicious” and an “excrescence”. He said it was foisted on reluctant ministers by the Treasury as the price of introducing universal credit, and should be scrapped.
A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: “We know people are struggling with rising prices, which is why we are providing record financial support worth around £3,300 per household and bearing down on inflation to help everyone’s money go further.
“The two-child policy asks families on benefits to make the same financial decisions as families supporting themselves solely through work, and there continues to be careful exemptions and safeguards in place within the policy to protect people in the most vulnerable circumstances.”
