Amelia Gentleman’s eloquent refocusing on the two-child benefit cap, and the imperative to end this morally untenable attack on so many already-fragile families, is timely and urgent (‘I have £7 in my bank account’: how the two-child benefit cap changed Britain, 25 September). The policy targets the poorest families and those with cultural and religious traditions of larger families, and is thus inherently both discriminatory and racist. And, as she discovers in talking to women struggling to cope with its impact on the wellbeing of their children, it also targets those who become pregnant “by accident” – which can often involve coercion.
For people on the edge of poverty, a third pregnancy raises the immediate prospect of impoverishment of the existing two children and, for some, the excruciating dilemma of whether to go ahead and sentence the family to poverty, or terminate the pregnancy. Gentleman quotes the former Tory minister for welfare reform David Freud’s condemnation of this policy as “vicious” and an “excrescence”. Even this savage judgment fails to convey the depravity of a policy whose logical outcome is the termination of an unplanned third or subsequent pregnancy.
It beggars belief that anyone could argue that we “cannot afford” to lift the cap – in effect, that we have no choice but to intentionally make hundreds of thousands of children really poor, badly nourished and, as a result, almost certainly educationally disadvantaged. And on top of that, to force women – who may otherwise have welcomed an unplanned child – into a situation where abortion is the only way to avoid impoverishing the children that they already have.
Felicity Laurence
Hastings, East Sussex
• Amelia Gentleman’s article lays bare the dire impact of an unconscionable policy on families struggling on low incomes. Six years ago, I interviewed low-income households in the UK, often led by single mothers, about the stark choices they faced on limited budgets. I’ve since spoken to other families on the breadline in Spain and Germany. Reading Gentleman’s interviews with Saira and Haniya cut me to the core.
Research by Human Rights Watch published in 2019 – along with the work of many others – warned that a wrongheaded policy like this would visit precisely these harms on families and children. The evidence that the policy is increasing child poverty is now incontrovertible. Larger families with fewer resources need more support, not less. A policy that punishes children for decisions made by their parents is wrong and out of line with the government’s human rights and children’s rights obligations.
This is not a change that needs the workings of a taskforce and strategy documents to be issued in due course. Indeed, waiting will simply consign even more children and families to poverty and hardship. Labour should end the cruel two-child limit policy, and do so now.
Kartik Raj
Senior researcher, Human Rights Watch
• Thank you to Amelia Gentleman for piercing the political silence that has descended over the two-child limit. While I agree with Jonathan Portes that it is inconceivable that the welcome commitment to a child poverty strategy will not lead to the abolition of the limit, the very obviousness of this is an argument for action now. Otherwise, how many more months or years must mothers such as Saira and Haniya struggle to manage on benefits far below their officially estimated needs, and must their children suffer as their childhoods tick away?
We are told that we can’t afford to abolish the policy. Yet in response to written questions (8 August and 16 September), the government has been unable to say what it would cost. And that is without even taking into account the hidden costs of the policy itself in terms of its impact on health, education and child protection.
Ruth Lister
Labour, House of Lords
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