Overview
- Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is urging Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to abolish the two-child benefit cap in full in next month’s budget.
- She is finalising a report for the prime minister and chancellor from a child poverty taskforce she co-chairs, which officials say will be hard for ministers to ignore.
- The Guardian reports that Rachel Reeves is considering a tapered alternative that would lessen the cap rather than remove it entirely, such as moving the limit to three or four children.
- Campaigners including the Child Poverty Action Group estimate full repeal would eventually cost about £3.6bn a year and lift roughly 350,000 children out of poverty; the cap, introduced in 2017, is estimated to affect more than 10% of UK children.
- Phillipson, who is running for Labour deputy leader to secure a mandate for tougher anti-poverty action, cites expanded free school meals she backed as helping an additional 100,000 children, while warning against a deputy who “throws stones from the outside.”