Labour is considering scrapping the two-child benefit cap and allowing parents to claim Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit for more than two children, Ministers have confirmed. A review is underway and changes could be announced in the autumn, welfare minister Andrew Western told the House of Commons. He said: “Lifting the cap is one of the many levers that the government is considering.”
The Minister was speaking after Conservatives forced a Commons vote on keeping the cap, which currently affects 469,780 households. Tories want to keep the restriction, but some Labour MPs want to end it. This would give many families on Universal Credit with three or more children an extra £3,514 for every additional child beyond the current limit of two. Tories, who argue people who don’t receive benefits have to make choices about how many children to have, also hoped to create a clear dividing line with Reform UK, which has vowed to axe the cap.
However, while Labour voted against the Tory proposal, Reform MPs including Nigel Farage did not speak or vote in the debate at all.
:abour Minister Mr Western told MPs: “We will look at it in the round, and when we come forward with out child poverty strategy, we will be looking to lift children in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and here in England, children up and down this country, out of poverty.”
He said the proposal was being considered as part of a child poverty “taskforce” which would publish a strategy in the autumn.
Mr Western said: “A third child has the same right to thrive as the first two … a hungry child is a hungry child whatever their background.”
Conservative Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Helen Whately told MPs that the growing benefits bill was “a ticking time bomb.”
She said: “If we don’t solve this problem. our economy will collapse.”
More people are now “net recipients” of welfare spending than contributors, receiving more from the system than they paid in taxes, she said.
“That’s right now, and every day that passes, spending on benefits is going up and up.”
