Overview

• The government will formally remove the two-child benefit cap in its upcoming Child Poverty Strategy.
• The cap currently affects around 1.6 million children and its abolition could lift roughly 470,000 out of poverty.
• Seven Labour MPs were suspended last July for defying the party whip over the cap and four had the whip restored in February.
• John McDonnell has branded the leadership’s stance as ‘callousness and political incompetence’ and is urging full reinstatement of all suspended MPs.
• This decision follows Sir Keir Starmer’s recent reversal of cuts to the winter fuel payment for more than nine million pensioners.