The two-child cap on benefits in the UK officially ends today in a policy shift that will lift an estimated 450,000 children out of poverty.<\/p>\n
First introduced by the Conservatives in 2017, the policy restricted child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in most households.<\/p>\n
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the cap would be lifted on April 6 when she delivered the budget in November, after months of pressure from Labour backbenchers.<\/p>\n
As the two-child cap ends, a series of other UK government policies aimed at helping people with rising living costs are also coming into force.<\/p>\n
This includes day one rights to paternity leave, and reforms to statutory sick pay as part of the Employment Rights Act.<\/p>\n
The state pension is also going up, something the government says will be worth up to \u00a3575 a year for a new claimant.<\/p>\n
Housing benefit and personal independence payments are among the benefits which are also being uprated.<\/p>\n
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the decision to scrap the cap meant the government was favouring benefits claimants over working people.<\/p>\n
Mrs Badenoch said: “While working people struggle with rising fuel costs and food prices, Keir Starmer is giving another handout to those on benefits.<\/p>\n
“The Conservatives believe in fairness and that those on welfare should have to make the same choices about their family as those who aren’t.<\/p>\n
“That’s why we would reinstate the two-child cap and use the savings to bolster our armed forces.<\/p>\n
“In an increasingly dangerous world, we have to prioritise, and my plans will ensure a stronger economy and a stronger country.”<\/p>\n
Human rights organisations Amnesty International led calls for the government to go further in its ambitions to tackle poverty in the UK.<\/p>\n
Jen Clark, Amnesty International UK’s economic, cultural and social rights lead, said: “However welcome the lifting of the two-child limit is, it fails to go far enough to help the vast majority of children living in poverty in the UK.<\/p>\n
“The government urgently needs to make changes to the social security system to make it fairer, particularly given the growing cost-of-living crisis.<\/p>\n
“This includes removing the benefit cap and scrapping the devastating system of sanctions.<\/p>\n
“For decades, these policies have kept those most in need in poverty, forcing parents to choose between putting food on the table and turning the heating on.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two-child cap on benefits in the UK officially ends today in a policy shift that will lift…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515065,"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-515064","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\/515064","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=515064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}