Reform UK has been gradually binning some of its costly policies, as it seeks to reassure voters and financial markets its economic policies are credible.<\/p>\n
As a result, some of the party’s more radical positions – such as its promise to deliver tax cuts worth \u00a390bn a year – have been abandoned, bringing it into closer alignment with Labour and the Conservatives on economic policy.<\/p>\n
Scrapping the cap was seen as a potential vote-winner for Reform UK, as government figures showing the majority of households affected by the policy are in work.<\/p>\n
Chancellor Rachel Reeves had been under growing pressure to remove the cap, with Labour MPs and charities arguing this is the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty.<\/p>\n
The government estimates the measure will mean 450,000 fewer children will be in relative poverty by 2029-30.<\/p>\n
But the Conservatives – the party Jenrick defected from recently – have criticised Labour’s decision to lift the cap, arguing people on benefits should have to make the same financial choices about having children as everyone else.<\/p>\n
Reform UK’s pledge to restore the cap closes down that line of political attack and draws a divide with Labour.<\/p>\n
“We are the party of alarm clock Britain,” Jenrick said. “We are a party of workers, not welfare.”<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Jenrick’s announcement on the two-child benefit cap was “shameful”.<\/p>\n
“Reform wants to push hundreds of thousands of children into poverty,” he added.<\/p>\n
Conservative shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride said Reform’s policies “would completely trash our public finances and leave Britain with a huge deficit and ballooning debt”.<\/p>\n
“Can we even trust their savings when it was Reform who pledged last year to scrap the two-child benefit cap,” Sir Mel said.<\/p>\n
“Reform’s story changes by the day, and their numbers simply do not add up.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reform UK has been gradually binning some of its costly policies, as it seeks to reassure voters and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-432403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}