Starmer announces child poverty taskforce in bid to see of dissent

The motion, which calls on the government to "immediately abolish the two-child limit" has been backed by the Greens, Plaid Cymru and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. 

Kim Johnson, a Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, will also table an amendment calling for the cap to be removed.

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It is up to Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle which amendments will get put to the vote next week.

Sir Keir’s significantly large majority means there is no chance of either of them passing, but the rebellion would be embarrassing for the Prime Minister.

The policy was brought in by George Osborne and took effect in 2017. It means that households claiming child tax credit or universal credit are unable to claim for a third or subsequent child.

When fully rolled out, it will affect one in five children, rising to 38% of those in the poorest fifth of households, according to recent research by the IFS.

Affected households on average will lose £4,300 per year, representing 10% of their income, according to the analysis.

In the press release announcing the new taskforce, Sir Keir said his ministers would “leave no stone unturned to give every child the very best start at life.”

He was asked about the cap in the Commons, with SNP Westminster Leader Stephen Flynn asking how many children will remain in poverty while the taskforce does its work, before it "will ultimately lead to the same conclusion we are proposing to stop the two-child benefit cap".

He added: “This is a policy – an iniquitous, heinous policy – which was introduced by the former Conservative government in 2015.

“Each and every one of us in this chamber knows that it retains children in poverty – hundreds of thousands of children across these isles.

“In Scotland alone, it impacts 27,000 households. It’s estimated that 14,000 children would immediately be taken out of poverty were it to be scrapped, but it was not mentioned in the Government’s programme for Government today.

“Instead, all we have heard is that a taskforce is going to be created – no timeframe for that taskforce, no indication of when that taskforce will conclude, and all the while, those children will remain in poverty.”

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Replying, the Prime Minister said: “I do not think there is a single Member who does not care about child poverty.

“The point of the taskforce is to devise a strategy, as we did when we were last in government, to drive those numbers down.

“It cannot be a single issue, but one that crosses a number of strands, and we will work with people across the House in order to tackle it.

“What matters is the commitment to drive those numbers down. That is what we did when last in government, and we will do it again.”

During the debate, Mr Flynn was asked by Labour MP Barry Gardiner why the Scottish Government had refused to mitigate the cap, despite having the power to do so. 

He replied to say it was a question of where the the money should come from.

"Should it come from Scotland's NHS? Should it have come from our schools? To come from our police?"

He said the "constraints placed upon Scotland by this place do not afford us the opportunity to mitigate and quite frankly, I find that absurd and deeply disingenuous to suggest that the remit of Scotland's Parliament should be to mitigate Westminster."

Lifting the two-child benefit cap would cost somewhere between £2.5bn and £3.6bn in 2024/25, according to the Resolution Foundation, which said such figures are "low compared to the harm that the policy causes".

The Child Poverty Action group said the cap is "driving up child poverty more than any other policy" and scrapping it should now happen in the first budget.