Curbing child poverty by scrapping the two-child benefit cap would save hundreds of lives a year and avoid thousands of admissions to hospital, the largest study of its kind suggests.
Keir Starmer has faced repeated demands from within Labour ranks and opposition leaders to abolish the policy, which was announced in 2015 by George Osborne, then chancellor. Almost half of all children in some towns and cities now live below the breadline.
Now researchers from the universities of Glasgow, Liverpool and Newcastle have shown for the first time the extraordinary impact that reducing child poverty with measures such as ditching the two-child benefit cap could have in England.
Tackling it would substantially cut the number of infant deaths and children in care, as well as rates of childhood nutritional anaemia and emergency admissions, with the most deprived regions, especially in north-east England, likely to benefit the most, the projections indicate.
Changes were likely to have huge beneficial knock-on effects on local authorities and the NHS, the research concluded. The findings were published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
The two-child limit was announced in 2015 by the Conservatives and came into effect in 2017, and restricts child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in most households.
Using local authority-level data, researchers modelled the effects different reductions in child poverty might have over the next decade.
They said their scenarios of a 15%, 25% and 35% reduction in poverty were considered “to be realistic in light of the 26% fall in prevalence previously observed in the UK between 1997 and 2010” under previous Labour governments.
All reduction scenarios would result in “substantial improvements to child health” between now and 2033, they said.
An “ambitious but realistic reduction” of 35% on 2023 levels “would be expected to result in avoiding a total of 293 infant deaths, 4,696 children entering care, 458 childhood admissions with nutritional anaemias and 32,650 childhood emergency admissions”, the researchers said.
They added: “These reductions would likely translate into significant savings for, and relieve pressure on, local authorities (in relation to children looked after) and health services.
“Benefits are likely to be greatest in the most disadvantaged areas, helping efforts to ‘level up’. Other health impacts that we have not been able to quantify are also likely.”
The researchers concluded that “if policymakers were to set and achieve child poverty targets for England – for example, through suggested measures such as removing the two-child limit and benefit cap – this would likely improve child health, particularly among the most socioeconomically disadvantaged and ‘level up’ regional inequalities”.
The latest official UK figures, published earlier this year, showed an estimated 4.33 million children in households in relative low income after housing costs in the year to March 2023 – a record high.
The new research estimated that northern parts of England “exhibited the greatest relative and absolute benefit” from child poverty reductions.
A government spokesperson said: “No child should be in poverty – that’s why our new cross-government taskforce will develop an ambitious child poverty strategy to tackle the crisis.
“Alongside this urgent work, we will roll out free breakfast clubs in all primary schools while delivering on our plan to grow the economy and make work pay for hard-working families in every part of the country.”
