Closing summary
We’ll end our live coverage now. Keir Starmer’s government has launched its full child poverty action plan – the heart of which is the lifting of the two-child benefits cap announced in the budget last week.
Under Labour, families will be able to access welfare payments for more than two children from April. The previous policy, brought in by the Tories in 2017 to teach low-income parents that “children cost money”, had plunged more than 1.7 million children under the poverty line – affecting nearly one in nine.
Given that in 2025, roughly 4.5 million children in the UK are living in poverty, two million in households which can’t afford essentials like food, housing and heating, Labour’s commitment has been welcomed by parents, case workers, charities, and everyone working to help people live with comfort and dignity in this country.
Scrapping the benefits cap does most of the heavy lifting but the other measures include:
Making it easier for parents receiving Universal Credit to get help paying upfront childcare costs
More free school meals
An £8 million pledge to get more families out of bed and breakfasts. In June, more than 2,000 families were living in this sort of emergency housing for over six weeks despite it being unlawful. More than 172,000 households in the UK are living in temporary accommodation
Councils have a new legal duty to tell schools and doctors when a child has moved into temporary accommodation with their family
Mothers and newborns will not be allowed to be discharged back into a B&B hostel or other unsuitable accommodation. In the past five years, 58 babies had died in settings where poor temporary accommodation was a factor, said the Homelessness Minister.
The chief criticism of the whole plan is that the government hasn’t committed to a binding or statutory target – a reduction of poverty by X per cent by X year. This is a “moral mission” for his government, Starmer says.
But as one think tank pointed out, there is: “considerable uncertainty over how large a reduction in measured poverty these policies will ultimately deliver, partly due to genuine economic uncertainty”. And other researchers noted there are many families who still can’t access benefits at all.
This post goes to exactly what being ‘in poverty’ means and how that is measured. You can read the government’s full plans here, and the numbers behind it here. Thanks for reading the blog today.
Updated
PM is asked questions from the reporter pool. How is this strategy going to help children?
Starmer again describes it as the “single biggest initiative taken on child poverty from any government”.
“We have a mission to drive down child poverty because children should be able to go as far as their talent takes them”. Repeats the line that “poverty is the biggest barrier” and children shouldn’t face any barriers to growing up and “contributing to the economy” – among other goals in adulthood, I’m sure.
He notes again this is a plan that aims to engender “generational change”.
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