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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Jem Bartholomew

‘It’s put so many families in poverty’: people on the impact of the two-child benefit cap

illustration of 19th-century family with five children sitting around a dinner table
‘People think poverty is something from Charles Dickens’ novels’: Bob Cratchit’s Christmas Dinner illustrated by Edwin Austin Abbey for A Christmas Carol. Photograph: The Granger Collection/Alamy

Keir Starmer has launched a cross-government taskforce to tackle child poverty, but backbench Labour MPs are calling for the government to go further and scrap the two-child benefit cap. Here people reveal how the limit affects their families.

Alicia* is a mother of four children in Newcastle, and is separated from their father. She does everything she can to avoid going to collect a parcel from a food bank. She will often buy a big sack of potatoes and cook them in different ways throughout the week – jacket potatoes, fried chips, wedges – so her kids get variation. She often skips breakfast and lunch herself.

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