CHILD poverty will be higher at the end of this Parliament than when the Government took office if it chooses not to scrap the two-child limit and benefit cap in its Child Poverty Strategy, charities have warned.
Signatories to a letter on Tuesday urging the Prime Minister to show personal commitment and leadership on the issue include charities whose advice the Government requested in its October 2024 policy paper on tackling child poverty (News, 1 November 2024) — something that it described as “both a moral imperative and crucial to building a stronger society and economy”.
That paper acknowledged: “Poverty scars the lives and life chances of our children. It is shameful that child poverty has increased by 700,000 since 2010, with over four million children now living in poverty in the UK and 800,000 children using foodbanks to eat. This is unacceptable.”
It emphasised: “We recognise the causes of child poverty are deep rooted, with solutions that go beyond government, and will involve action from across society, including businesses, voluntary community and social enterprises (VCSE) working together in new and improved partnerships.”
The two-child limit denies child allowances in Universal Credit to third or subsequent children born after April 2017: a policy that affects 1.6 million children in the UK. It “pushes more and more children into poverty every day and will act as a break on any other action taken by government to reduce poverty”, the charities write.
They argue that the benefit cut pushes 300,000 children into deep poverty at a time when a parent’s capacity to work is limited; and that neither policy is compatible with the ambition to raise living standards.
The letter commends the “strong leadership” from the Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions and Education, and the “thorough engagement from the Child Poverty Unit”. It asks Sir Keir Starmer to “look to [his] personal leadership to deliver this change . . . with a public narrative about why it matters so much to your vision for the country.”
The signatories — Child Poverty Action Group, Citizens Advice, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Save the Children UK, Barnardo’s, Trussell, the Children’s Society, and Action for Children, along with the National Children’s Bureau, the End Child Poverty Coalition, Centre for Young Lives, and Gingerbread — declare: “There can be no road to sustainable national growth unless child poverty reduces at scale and at pace.”
Bishops in the House of Lords — notably the former Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Paul Butler — have consistently urged the Government to scrap the benefit cap. “Life can be unpredictable,” he told peers in March 2023. “There is no longer a safety net to catch [larger families who fall on hard times] and put them back on their feet.”
Through removing the two-child limit, “each and every child will be valued, and children will no longer be reduced to a number, but be seen as individuals with worth and potential.”
