Families hit by the two-child benefit cap are much more likely to go hungry, skip meals or be unable to afford to eat healthily, according to new data which shows about one in four low-income families with three or more children are suffering food insecurity.
The Food Foundation thinktank called on the government to scrap the two-child limit as part of a package of measures that it argued would cut child poverty and reduce hunger.
Overall, 14% of UK households – comprising 7.2 million adults and 2.7 million children – experienced food insecurity last month, meaning they could not afford food, skipped meals or did not eat for a whole day, the foundation’s latest survey found.
The findings were released as the government suspended the whip from seven Labour MPs who voted for a Scottish National party amendment to the king’s speech on Tuesday which called on the government to scrap the two-child benefit limit.
The former shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the other leftwing rebel MPs Rebecca Long-Bailey, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain and Zarah Sultana were suspended.
The cap prevents parents on universal credit claiming benefit support for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017. This means families lose out on £3,455 a year for each child affected, subjecting many to severe hardship.
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, has so far resisted calls to immediately abolish the policy, introduced by the Conservative government in 2017, instead suggesting its future will be considered as part of a government-wide child poverty strategy.
Campaigners, poverty experts and many Labour MPs are frustrated by the refusal to scrap a policy that has become emblematic of austerity measures that fuelled increases in poverty and destitution. Abolishing it would cost £1.7bn, pulling 300,000 children out of poverty, charities have said.
The latest official two-child benefit limit statistics, published a fortnight ago, revealed a record 1.6 million children in the UK were living in families affected by the policy last year, an increase of 100,000.
The Food Foundation tracker found hunger was significantly more prevalent in larger families. While 17% of households with one or two children were food insecure, this rose to 23% for households with three children and 26% for families with four or more children.
Shona Goudie, policy and advocacy manager at the Food Foundation, said: “Our food insecurity tracker shows that families with three or more children are much more likely to experience food insecurity than families with less children, in part reflecting the tragic impact of the two-child benefit limit.”
She added: “The question of whether to ensure all children are properly fed in our society should not be a difficult one. Measures such as the abolishing the two-child benefit limit, the expansion of the healthy start scheme and giving more schoolchildren a free hot meal at lunchtime are essential to providing all children with the best possible start in life.”
The Food Foundation said soaring food prices in the last two years meant that in the poorest 20% of the population, households with children would have to spend more than two-thirds of their disposable income to meet official government nutrition guidelines, compared with 42% of households without children.
Michael Marmot, director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, said: “To follow the government’s healthy eating advice, households with children in the lowest 20% of household income would have to spend 70% of their income on food.
“These people are not ignorant, lazy, or bad planners. They are poor. The challenge for the new government is to ensure that every child has the conditions for the best start in life.”
The Eatwell guide sets out the proportions needed for a healthy diet in five categories: fruit and vegetables; carbohydrates such as potatoes, rice and pasta; proteins including beans, fish, eggs and meat; dairy; and oils and spreads.
The foundation also highlighted how benefit levels were failing to prevent hunger and food insecurity. Its latest survey found that 42% of households in receipt of universal credit reported experiencing food insecurity, compared with 11% of those not claiming the benefit.
The foundation’s food insecurity tracking programme surveyed 6,177 UK adults between 26 June and 2 July, with the results in effect setting a hunger benchmark for the new government.
