![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/2024-06-28t070422z_1170005573_rc2316aphg9e_rtrmadp_3_britain-election-housing-squatters-1038x778.jpg\")
\n Photo by Hannah McKay\/Reuters<\/p>\n
\n Photo by Hannah McKay\/Reuters<\/p>\n
In one short Budget intervention this afternoon,\u00a0Chancellor\u00a0Rachel Reeves has done\u00a0more to transform the lives of 450,000\u00a0of Britain\u2019s poorest children than any of the seven previous Conservative chancellors, who, in 14 long years, did nothing but harm to the lives of vulnerable children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The measure that lifts so many out of poverty in one stroke\u00a0is the abolition of the two-child benefit cap \u2013 a change\u00a0the\u00a0New Statesman\u00a0called for in a special issue of the magazine<\/a> themed around child poverty, published in May.<\/p>\n But the challenge for Labour does not end with the abolition of the two-child rule. Ministers, MPs and party members now have\u00a0to go out into the country and\u00a0explain and\u00a0expose the prejudices and dispel the myths that the Conservative Party has popularised about the rule, which denies tax credits to new-born\u00a0third and fourth children.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was the first of the seven Tory chancellors, George Osborne, who claimed that middle-class taxpayers \u2013 who cannot afford to have children \u2013are paying their taxes to subsidise work-shy welfare claimants having third and fourth children and gaming the benefit system.<\/p>\n This is a charge\u00a0now being echoed by\u00a0Kemi Badenoch<\/a>,\u00a0who will be\u00a0whipping up faux outrage at what Tories slanderously claim to be the new beneficiaries of the abolition:\u00a0parents whom\u00a0they claim to be feckless and indolent.<\/p>\n Labour must rebut these falsehoods. The truth is very different. The Conservatives have been misleading the public for years about the apparent merits of their policy\u00a0that was\u00a0destined to put one million new-born children into poverty.<\/p>\n Treat yourself or a friend this Christmas to a New Statesman subscription from \u00a31 per month<\/p>\n In fact,\u00a060 per cent of the children<\/a>\u00a0hit by the two-child cap live in households that contain at least one working parent. These 275,000 families\u00a0are not part of a dependency culture. They are working people at the sharpest end of the cost-of-living crisis. Poorly paid, they have suffered the biggest cuts of all in their living standards \u2013 losing since 2017 what is the equivalent now of \u00a366\u00a0every week, and, for some, \u00a3132\u00a0per week. They are\u00a0our\u00a0shop assistants, warehouse workers and care helpers, who are trying to bring up their families and to make ends meet on a\u00a0minimum wage that\u00a0simply cannot cover the cost of food, heating and children\u2019s clothes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most of the 90,000 single parents whose youngest child is under three \u2013 that is, 14 per cent of all households with three or more children receiving Universal Credit \u2013 are unable to work because they cannot afford childcare or their child has just been born.<\/p>\n Many of the rest affected by the two-child rule will, contrary to Tory claims, not receive the extra cash in full because they will still be subject to the benefit cap<\/a>, which limits the total amount their family can receive.<\/p>\n The truth is that, since 2010, low-income families have borne the brunt of social security cuts. Their living standards have fallen due to Conservative benefit freezes, the introduction of the housing benefit cap, the abolition of the social fund, the \u201cfive-week wait\u201d rule for new Universal Credit claimants and the widespread use of benefit deductions to repay loans.\u00a0<\/p>\n No one could be anything other than moved to tears when, this month, Alison McGovern, the homelessness minister, spelled out the tragic fallout from rising poverty: 80,000 children living<\/a> in homeless accommodation and 74 children<\/a> who have died between 2019 and 2024 in unsuitable, often damp-ridden, temporary housing.<\/p>\n Not only is the abolition of the two-child rule the fastest and most cost-effective way to lift around 500,000 children<\/a> out of poverty, but it also signals a renewed commitment to treating each child equally \u2013 sending the message that there are no second-class citizens in our country and that, in a Labour Britain, systemic discrimination against children is wrong.<\/p>\n This two-child limit policy should be scrapped for another reason: its rules were so complex that 17,730 households with twins, triplets, or other multiple births, 1,740 with adopted children, and 3,280 in non-parental care (looked after by a relative or family friend) had to be exempted<\/a>. Its complexity veered into outright perversity, requiring mothers who had been victims of involuntary conception<\/a> to undergo an intrusive \u201crape test\u201d before they could even claim tax credits for a child who would otherwise fall foul of the cap. Some 3,670 mothers underwent the tests. Many more felt unable to face this demeaning process, leaving themselves and their children without support. From April, for once and for all, this iniquitous \u201crape clause\u201d will be gone.<\/p>\n Ending the two-child rule is more than securing the immediate release of children from poverty. It is an invest-now, save-later policy \u2013 one designed, as an excerpt from the soon-to-be-published Child Poverty Review<\/a> notes, \u201cto help people succeed,\u201d with improved educational outcomes and higher adult earnings, ultimately paying for itself through increased tax receipts.<\/p>\n As the report finds, only 25 per cent of English children in the bottom income cohort achieve five good GCSEs, compared with 70 per cent in the top two higher-income cohorts. This means the cycle of poverty continues, with these young people five times more likely to be poor as adults.<\/p>\n It is this link between poverty and low educational attainment that, as the review notes, is one of the \u201ckey risk factors\u201d behind the number of Neets \u2013 young people not in employment, education, or training \u2013 approaching one million<\/a> under the Conservatives. This is precisely the group the Budget aims to lift into work and out of poverty, generating significant welfare savings in the process.<\/p>\n It is one of many initiatives \u2013 from breakfast clubs<\/a>, free school meals<\/a> and family hubs to mentoring struggling families \u2013 that will form the basis of the Child Poverty Review report. When enacted, its recommendations promise to be the most substantial government intervention against family poverty since the Child Poverty Act of 2010 \u2013 legislation the Conservatives supported before that year\u2019s election and then cynically abandoned<\/a>. Experience from the 2,600 Sure Start centres created before 2010 has shown that the savings from tackling child poverty far outweigh the costs of inaction.<\/p>\n And so Reeves\u2019\u00a0reversal of Tory cuts\u00a0maintains the tradition of Labour\u00a0governments that first introduced\u00a0family allowances<\/a>\u00a0in 1945, legislated for universal\u00a0child benefit<\/a>\u00a0in 1977, ushered in\u00a0child tax credits<\/a>\u00a0in 2003, and then\u00a0built around them\u00a0child trust funds<\/a>,\u00a0educational maintenance allowances<\/a>,\u00a0Sure Start<\/a>\u00a0and a\u00a0law to abolish child poverty<\/a>\u00a0in a generation.<\/p>\n I thank the Chancellor for her decisive stand in favour of childhood equality.\u00a0And I have an immediate reply to Kemi Badenoch and her Conservative apologists,\u00a0who say they will reinstate this pernicious two-child rule legislation: shame on you!<\/p>\n Shame, for leaving the country with\u00a04.5 million children in poverty<\/a>, the worst level of child poverty in living memory. Shame, for taking Britain to near the\u00a0bottom of the\u00a0European and rich countries\u2019\u00a0league<\/a>\u00a0for children\u2019s well-being. Shame, for undermining the aspirations of defenceless, vulnerable children growing up in poverty today.<\/p>\n It is time for\u00a0every party to realise that the country\u2019s future depends on investing in\u00a0the potential not just of some of our children, but all of our children. In recent weeks, scores of charities,\u00a0anti-poverty campaigners, faith leaders and political leaders have come together to demand change,\u00a0including Lucy Powell and Bridget Phillipson, who made the reduction of child poverty the centrepiece of Labour\u2019s deputy leadership contest.\u00a0<\/p>\n The next step is to build a permanent four-nation, all-party anti-poverty alliance, a\u00a0coalition of compassion led by charities and faith groups to keep the needs of children at all times uppermost in the public mind. Together, we can bring an end to child poverty and wipe out what has in recent years been a scar on the country\u2019s soul and a stain on our collective conscience.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/dl6pgk4f88hky.cloudfront.net\/2021\/09\/TNS_master_logo.svg\"){kind=logo}
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