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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Toby Helm and Michael Savage

Archbishop of Canterbury urges Starmer to ditch ‘cruel’ two-child benefit cap

Under the limit, families with a third or subsequent child born after April 2017 do not receive additional benefit.
Under the limit, families with a third or subsequent child born after April 2017 do not receive additional benefit. Photograph: Jasmin Merdan/Getty Images

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has issued an impassioned plea to the government and Keir Starmer’s Labour party to scrap the two-child limit on benefit payments to families, branding it as a cruel and immoral policy that plunges hundreds of thousands of children into poverty.

The intervention by the head of the Church of England will place particular pressure on Starmer to make a firm commitment to end the policy, which he has so far refused to do, as he tries to position Labour as being responsible with the public finances.

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