Will Starmer take on ownership of two-child benefit cap?

Observations about what government chooses to spend its money on and what it doesn’t are so commonplace as to be, arguably, trite.

Whether it’s Paul Weller – “you’ll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns” – Tupac Shakur – “they got money for wars but can’t feed the poor” or Gil Scott-Heron – “I can’t pay no doctor bill but whitey’s on the moon” – there’s never been a shortage of pop culture titans expressing that very sentiment. And that’s without even invoking Billy Bragg.

Still, it’s hard not to call such examples to mind when surveying the mess the new Labour government has got itself into over the two-child benefit cap.

If anyone needed a reminder, that cap was introduced by George Osborne on April 5 2017 and prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for a third child, and any subsequent, if they were born after that date.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, it currently affects two million children and will encompass close to 700,000 more by the end of the current parliament. The Child Poverty Action Group has said removing the limit could lift 300,000 out of poverty, with its research finding 93% of families affected have found it has hit their ability to buy food and 82% their ability to pay energy bills.

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One would think that its reversal would be an easy early win for the new government but there’s just one problem – they say they can’t afford the £1.7bn it would cost.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said on Tuesday she “understood” calls to abolish it but “our inheritance is dire” and the government couldn’t make “unfunded” pledges. In response to one of his own MPs, Kim Johnson, calling for the limit to be scrapped Josh Simons said last week: “It breaks our hearts that we can’t, but the public finances are in a dire state and we can’t commit to doing this now”.

Mr Starmer’s government is saying, effectively, that it’s just not financially prudent to lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty. Trite or not, when you do that, you can expect scrutiny over just what you are willing to spend money on.

The SNP have announced that they will seek an amendment to the King’s Speech calling for the two-child cap to be scrapped, with the party’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn describing it as “appalling and indefensible”.

He further warned that the failure to get rid of it meant “this is now the Labour Party's two-child cap – and it must take ownership of the misery it will cause as a result”. He’s right.

SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn called for the cap to be scrapped, describing it as 'appalling and inoffensive' (Image: PA)
There is cross-party support for its abolition. The Lib Dems, the Greens and even Reform UK are in favour. Indeed, Suella Braverman has described it as “punishing” the poor and, perhaps surprisingly, she didn’t mean that as an argument in its favour.

For a Prime Minister who came into office on the promise of ‘Change’ – and very little else – to stick with a cap which is hugely unpopular and ineffective while pledging to increase military spending to 2.5% of GDP is unlikely to endear him to an electorate which is hugely sceptical of the man and his programme, despite his large majority. He’s also promised £3bn per year to Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes’, opening up an attack line so easy Vladimir Putin won’t even need a bot farm.

Indeed, it would be tempting to reach back to the world of popular music and say this is exactly the kind of thing which fuels sentiment like Sam Fender’s “they all do the same only the names change honey/you can join their club if you’re born into money” except, of course, for the little-known fact that Mr Starmer’s dad was a toolmaker.

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If an amendment to the King’s Speech relating to the benefit cap is selected by the speaker, the new Prime Minister will likely face a rebellion of his own MPs on the first day of the new parliament.

Mr Starmer’s majority is such that it won’t have any material effect, the amendment will be defeated, but the optics would be terrible: a supposedly strong, stable, sensible government unable to control its own benches as it refuses to get rid of a policy it knows is causing material harm to impoverished children.

Not only would it hand the SNP an attack line on a platter and cause revolt on the left of his own party, it would cede the moral high ground to Nigel-bloody-Farage.

That’s not sensible centrism, that’s what keen football fan Mr Starmer would call an own goal.