Shadow Scottish Secretary Ian Murray has urged Sir Keir Starmer to find the money to scrap the two-child benefits cap.

However, the Labour frontbencher said they had to be “credible in terms of the economy.”

His comments come as trade unions, party members and the shadow cabinet head to the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham for the National Policy Forum, to set out a policy programme to guide their manifesto at the next general election. 

READ MORE: Rishi Sunak welcomes Keir Starmer support for two-child limit

The party has been divided in recent days after Sir Keir confirmed he would not scrap the cap, introduced by George Osborne.

The policy means that households claiming child tax credit or universal credit are unable to claim for a third or subsequent child born after 6 April 2017.

There is an exemption for families where that third or subsequent child is the result of “non-consensual conception.”

However, the only way this can be claimed is for the mother to disclose their rape to the Department for Work and Pensions.

Recent research produced by the House of Commons library revealed that it affected more than 80,000 children in Scotland, and pushed 20,000 of them into poverty as a result.

READ MORE: Two-child benefit cap Scotland: 'more than 80,000 affected'

Mr Murray told the BBC: “The bottom line is that we all agree that this is a dreadful policy and we all agree that it's affecting people that we should be supporting.

“We need to find and identify, and do everything we can, to identify the money that we can pay for it and have a plan to deliver it.”

He added: “But we've got to be credible in terms of the economy, because we can see from what's happened over the last few months if you lose control of the economy it's working people that pay.

“You've got to identify a process of what your child poverty reduction strategy is going to look like. And each individual policy will contribute towards that.”

Mr Murray said Sir Keir was committed to eradicating child poverty.”

He said: “There's a long way to go until the general election. A long way to go until we finalise and print the manifesto. And I would encourage people to wait until that happens.”

Earlier this week, Sir Keir said Labour needed to make "tough decisions".

"We keep saying collectively as a party we have got to take tough decisions and in the abstract everyone says, 'that's right Keir'.

"And then we get a tough decision, we have been in one of those in the last few days, and its, 'well I don't like that, can we just not make that one, I am sure there is another tough decision somewhere else that we could make.'

"But we have to make the tough decisions. This isn't some reflection on some focus group that says, 'we'd like Labour to have an economic straight jacket on', it is the fundamentals."

READ MORE: Keir Stamer accused of 'massive betrayal' over two-child benefit limit

The National Policy Forum will be held behind closed doors and should, by the end of the weekend, produce six policy documents to be sent to the party's annual conference in October.

There is, however, no obligation, for any of the finalised documents to be included in the manifesto. 

A draft document circulated in May pledged “fundamental reform of Universal Credit” to “tackles child poverty.” 

According to reports attempts will be made by activists and unions to amend this to include a commitment to "end the punitive features" of the benefit system, including specifically the benefits cap and the two-child limit.