Time to Scrap the Two Child Benefit Cap and Lift Children Out of Poverty
In July 2023, I led a Westminster Hall Debate calling for the cancellation of the 2-child benefit cap as a simple means to lifting children out of poverty.
The explosion of child poverty that we are witnessing today has been the number one by-product of the last 13 years of Tory austerity.
The current cost of living crisis is adding unbearable pressure to an already critical situation for many families who are struggling to make ends meet.
Children are going to bed on an empty stomach and going to school unable to concentrate or learn to their full potential.
Children are incredibly aware of the stigma of poverty, and the pressure of this can have lifelong psychological effects on top of the material impact on educational attainment and life chances and associated health problems.
Last year, the Joseph Rowntree Foundations annual report on UK Poverty showed that child poverty in families with more than two children increased from 33 percent to 47 percent between 2012-13 and 2019-20 – reaching levels not seen since before 1997.
In my own constituency of Liverpool Riverside, 11 children in a class of 30 are living in poverty. Of the 1400 children in households in receipt of Universal Credit, 440 of them are not eligible for extra support due to having two or more siblings born after 6 April 2017.
These families are disproportionately affected by increases in the cost of living and are treated punitively by the benefits system.
1.3 million children across this country are currently losing out under the cap, with their families losing on average £3,235 directly out of their pockets. The Child Poverty Action Group and Save the Children predict that this number will rise to 1.5 million.
We know that lifting the cap would immediately lift 250,000 children out of poverty, and a further 850,000 children would be raised out of deep poverty – with child poverty campaigners calling it the single most effective intervention to immediately tackle child poverty.
It would cost this government just £1.3 billion. Consider that against the £37bn wasted by this government on a failed Covid test and trace system. Or the £5bn that the government found for the defence budget in March. Or the £9bn tax cut to corporations and pensions giveaway for the 1 percent so generously granted by this government in the last budget.
We know the money is there to help struggling families if only we can find the will.
We are seeing the biggest drop in spending power in 70 years. Total spending on public services is set to be 12 percent lower in 2027-28 than in 2010. Yet the wealth of UK billionaires has more than trebled since the Tories took government.
There is a simple fix for this. Tax profits and wealth and enhance workers’ rights so that work pays enough to live and raise a family on. That way we can ensure that not a single child in this country goes hungry, and no child gets left behind.
Alongside the Bishop of Durham, the Child of the North APPG and the End Child Poverty Coalition, I will continue to campaign for the scrapping of this cruel and ineffective benefit cap.