One Born Every Minute was magical reality TV, inviting us into the delivery suite to marvel at the everyday miracle that each new life brings. Who doesn’t love the feeling of hope, possibility and fresh beginnings that comes with a baby’s birth?
But for the past seven years, the opportunities of many babies have been profoundly and barbarically shaped by the presence of the two-child limit. This caps denies third and subsequent children born after April 2017 means-tested support worth up to £3,455 a year.
The two-child limit has long raised tricky questions for Keir Starmer’s changed Labour party, which has – to date – not committed to ending the policy, despite sustained pressure from anti-poverty charities, influential thinktanks and religious leaders including the archbishop of Canterbury. Today, only seven days into Labour’s government, official statistics show that one in nine children in the UK live in households affected by the policy.
There is a lot that is cruel about the two-child limit, but one thing that is especially pernicious is the way in which its net widens and the number affected grows every day it remains in place. By the time it is fully rolled out, analysis suggests one in five children will live in affected households. That’s equivalent to six children in every school class.
The two-child limit seeps into the everyday fabric of families’ lives, leaving children and their parents without the basic essentials that they need to get by. Over the past four years, I’ve been part of research working alongside families directly affected by the two-child limit and its sister policy, the benefit cap.
We have spoken to parents such as Wendy, who no longer gives her youngest children a bath or story at bedtime because this clashes with when her local supermarket reduces items close to their use-by date. And Amanda, who had to choose which child’s needs to meet when one child needed new T-shirts, the other underwear. Amanda felt the basic injustice and sadness of this, reflecting on other people who “don’t have to think about which kid they love the most that month”.
I have researched poverty for 15 years, and it has sadly long been common to hear parents talk about the steps they take to try to shield their children from its effects: skipping a meal so that their kids can be fed; turning the heating off during the day when children are at school. What we found in our study of the two-child limit and benefit cap is that children are also routinely trying to protect their parents from the impact of their poverty: nudging a sibling in the supermarket not to ask mum for that treat or magazine, because she doesn’t have the money; trying to hide shoes that are rubbing as they know the money simply isn’t there for a new pair.
This is profoundly damaging to children who are being forced to grow up too soon, all because of political choices that could and should be overturned. Lifting the two-child limit would instantly remove 300,000 children from poverty and would send a wider signal to children, their families and to all of us that, borrowing a New Labour sentiment: every child matters.
Those who defend the policy argue that people should only have the children they can afford, and that those on benefits should face the same decisions as those in paid work. But this is a deliberately simplistic and misleading argument. Working families are affected by the policy: these latest statistics show that 59% of affected households include someone in work.
None of us can know what the future will bring. Who can be confident when they first conceive that they will be able to support that child without any extra help for the next 18 years? I am a mother to four children, aged from 12 to five. I work near-enough full-time and have a partner who is an electrician. At the moment we can financially support our children, but this could easily and suddenly change. One of us could get sick, or lose our job, or our relationship might break down. Were any of these things to happen, the social security system should be there to support us, helping us through a difficult time. But so long as the two-child limit remains in place, we would not receive a penny for our fourth child. Our third would get help, purely by dint of her age; she is seven and was born just before the limit took effect. But household budgets are not boxed off into per-child elements, so all four children would suffer.
The last government was disproportionately dominated by elites, including that tiny minority of households who can say with confidence that they have the financial means to support their children come what may. But this new government is different. Many cabinet members have known life on a low income, and recognise the fear that financial insecurity bring. The new work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, rightly said today that“too many children are growing up in poverty and this is a stain on our society.”.
Starmer has pledged that his party will be judged on its record on child poverty. Scrapping the two-child limit must be the first step. But Labour should also make a broader argument about the value of social security as an investment in each and every one of us. I want to live in a country where every child born every minute has the opportunity to flourish and thrive. For that to happen, the two-child limit needs to go, and go today.
Ruth Patrick is a professor of social policy at the University of York
