The Government has faced calls from campaigners, opposition MPs and some Tory backbenchers to scrap the two-child benefit cap
The possibility of ditching the two-child benefit cap is still on the cards, a Cabinet member said on Tuesday. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson spoke about Labour’s commitment to reducing child poverty, framing it as the Government’s “moral mission” and casting Reform UK as being opposed to the interests of hardworking individuals.
With an anticipated cost of about £3.5 billion, calls are intensifying for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to axe the contentious two-child benefit cap, a policy limiting support through Universal Credit to two children per family.
The much-awaited child poverty strategy from the Government, initially slated for release in spring, has now been postponed to autumn to coincide with the upcoming budget set by the Chancellor.
When probed on BBC Breakfast about whether she’d “scrap” the policy, Ms Phillipson responded: “We’re certainly looking at it as part of the task force. As I say, nothing’s off the table, but this is not straightforward; the costs are high.
“When we came into Government we had to make some difficult decisions about how we got the economy back on a stable footing, because actually it’s working people who lose out when you have that kind of instability that we saw under Liz Truss, when mortgage rates went up, rent went up as a result of all of the instability and the chaos.
“But I came into politics to tackle child poverty, to make sure that wherever you’re from doesn’t determine what you can go on to achieve in life, to break that link between background and success. That is the moral mission of this Labour Government. That is what we are all as a Government determined to deliver.”
She continued: “We’ll set it all out later on this year, in the autumn. I think it’s important that we get it right.
“So what we’ve heard from experts, from organisations, from those who are supporting families and children in poverty, is that they want a comprehensive strategy that addresses every aspect of how we can make sure that fewer children are growing up in poverty.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is set to present his “pitch to working people” on Tuesday, pledging to abolish the two-child benefit cap and restore the winter fuel payment. Ms Phillipson dismissed Mr Farage’s party as “not serious”.
Speaking to Sky News, she said: “Reform previously supported introducing, or the predecessor party, supported introducing the two-child cap. I don’t think it’s serious to suggest that millionaires should receive the winter fuel allowance, but we are committed to ensuring that more pensioners can benefit from the winter fuel allowance, as the Prime Minister said last week.
“Reform are the people that don’t believe in the NHS, working people would be lost without the NHS. They don’t believe in it in its current form. They don’t believe in it into the future. They would seek to dismantle it as it exists now, free at the point of need.
“That’s who Reform are. It’s just not serious. They’re not on the side of working people.”
Meanwhile, Conservative shadow chancellor Mel Stride said his party would not get “carried away with this idea that Nigel Farage is a party of the right”.
Speaking on Times Radio, he pointed out the inconsistencies in Reform’s manifesto: “(The Reform) manifesto had £140 billion of giveaways in it, both tax and spending. They say they would have taken everybody earning up to £20,000 out of income tax altogether, at a cost of £60 billion. Not a shred of evidence that they have any way that they know how to actually fund that.
“And (Mr Farage) is now today standing up, he’s going to say something about winter fuel payment and the two-child benefit cap, meaning that people can continue to have more children, and that will be funded and covered by the state – that is a left-wing position, and it also comes with a price tag of £5 billion between those two measures.
“He has not got a clue as to how any of that is going to be funded and we’ve seen that playbook before, and it doesn’t lead to a good place.”