SCRAPPING the two-child benefit will be “considered” by the Government, a Cabinet minister has said – as she claimed doing so was “very expensive”.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson on Monday said axing the policy would be looked at “as one of a number of ways” to lift children out of poverty.
It comes as Keir Starmer could face the threat of his first backbench revolt over the benefit cap that affects some 1.6 million children.
Against the background of rising child poverty – with more than four million children now living in low-income households – the Prime Minister has been urged by charities, opposition parties and some of his own MPs to abolish the limit.
The SNP have tabled an amendment to the King’s Speech calling for the cap to be axed and left-wing Labour MPs are expected to weigh in further to the debate on Monday.
Phillipson said the possible scrapping of the limit would be looked at by a new taskforce she is leading with Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall (above) as part of a review of potential policies to reduce child poverty.
She told Sky News: “Too many young people in our country are growing up in poverty. That number increased massively under the Conservatives.
“There are a range of measures that we will need to consider in terms of how we respond to this.”
On ditching the two-child benefit limit, she continued: “Unfortunately it’s also a very expensive measure, but we will need to consider it as one of a number of levers in terms of how we make sure we lift children out of poverty.
“Housing is a big factor… The fact that for lots of families work doesn’t pay in the way that it should, and that increasingly what we see is that children are growing up in poverty where there is at least one person in that household in work.
“We will look at every measure in terms of how we can address this terrible blight that scars the life chances of too many children.”
But given the chance to endorse Phillipson’s comments later on Monday morning, the Prime Minister refused to do so.
Starmer (below) said: “What the Education Secretary said this morning I agree with, which is she’s passionate about tackling poverty and child poverty in particular.
“She spoke very powerfully this morning, because she speaks as a woman who grew up in poverty, everybody who knows her background knows how hard it was for her.
“So that’s why I’m very pleased that she’s one of the chairs of our taskforce on tackling child poverty, and we will make sure that the strategy covers all the bases to drive down child poverty. No child should grow up in poverty.”
And a Downing Street later poured cold water on suggestions the Government had changed its position on the policy, which Starmer during the election campaign committed to keeping.
The Prime Minister's spokesperson said ministers would not "make spending commitments without being able to say where the money was going to come from".
But they added that "nothing’s out of the scope of the taskforce" when pressed on whether the cap could be scrapped.
Ministers have so far suggested the state of the public finances means they cannot afford to abolish the benefit limit unless economic growth is secured first.
The cap was introduced by then-chancellor George Osborne in 2015 and restricts child welfare payments to the first two children born to most families.
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn (below) urged Scottish Labour MPs to back the party’s amendment to remove the cap, which will be debated on Monday.
It has the support of former Labour leader and now independent MP Jeremy Corbyn as well as the Green and Plaid Cymru MPs.
So far, no Scottish Labour MPs have put their names to the motion.
Whether the amendment is ultimately voted on is up to Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle.
Flynn said ahead of the debate: “The two-child cap was the Tories operating at their worst, so scrapping the cap would deliver on the promise made to the public for real change.”
The debate comes after Labour MP Rosie Duffield said in a Sunday newspaper the two-child benefit cap amounts to “social cleansing” and is an “anti-feminist and unequal piece of legislation”.
“It legislates against women’s autonomy over their own bodies, the exact opposite of anything that could possibly be described as a Labour Party value,” she wrote in an article for The Sunday Times.
