LABOUR will not remove the two-child benefit cap in the King’s Speech, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has suggested.
The top Labour MP appeared on BBC Breakfast on Tuesday morning and defended her government’s decision to keep the benefits cap – which prevents families from claiming for their third or subsequent children unless they can meet certain conditions, such as proving that the child is a product of rape.
Labour are under pressure from within their own party to use Wednesday’s King’s Speech, which will see the monarch read out a list of bills and priorities for Keir Starmer’s government, to commit to ending the cap.
However, Rayner told the BBC it would not happen. Asked why not, she said: “Well, first of all, we're going to be reviewing Universal Credit and I think that's important.
“Secondly, we've got a child poverty strategy, which is not just one lever. I accept that people are frustrated around the two-child cap.”
Asked if she was frustrated, Rayner said: “People are frustrated. We've had 14 years of the Tories who have put us on the highest tax burden for 70 years and lowest growth.
“So that's why growth is imperative to us, so that we can afford to spend on making sure we can lift children out of poverty.”
Rayner went on: “I think it's really clear, and we said it before we were elected, that our number one priority is if we cannot say where the money is coming from, we will not make unfunded spending commitments.
“And the Chancellor has been very clear about that. We said it before the election and we're not going to change course now.
“Of course, we want to tackle child poverty. The last Labour government did. We lifted a million pensioners and children out of poverty. And it will be this Labour government that will have to do the same again.”
'I accept people are frustrated' Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner told #BBCBreakfast the Government will not make changes in the King's Speech to the two child benefit cap https://t.co/nFxLF1XmHP pic.twitter.com/J3mkpa2ZkS
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) July 16, 2024
The Communities Secretary then avoided answering when asked if she was comfortable keeping the two-child cap in place considering that she had previously described it as “obscene and inhumane” when the Tories were in power.
Responding, Scottish Government Minister Christina McKelvie said Labour were guilty of an "utterly disgraceful lack of action".
McKelvie said: "What Angela is accepting here is that she’s happy to have children in poverty than have the moral or political bravery to end it.
"If this is Labour change then she’s culpable in keeping children cold and hungry when she can stop it immediately."
University of Glasgow's Alison Phipps added: "The costs is to children; to the women tasked with proving rape; to the generations to come living with the cost of malnourishment and stigmatisation. This is a policy which only benefits the already well-enough-off."
And Plaid Cymru's Liz Saville Roberts said: "Labour says it won’t scrap the cruel two child limit as it won’t make an unfunded commitment. So fund it.
"Scrapping the two-child limit this year would cost £2.5 billion. Equalising capital gains with income tax would raise £15bn a year. Labour’s hands are not tied."
The news comes after SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn urged Labour to use the King’s Speech to do “the bare minimum” and scrap the two-child limit.
In a letter to Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar asking him to have his MPs oppose the policy, Flynn said the “Tory two child cap became the Labour Party two child cap” once Keir Starmer stepped through the door of Downing Street.
Figures published last week by the Department for Work and Pensions showed there were 1.6 million children living in households affected by the cap as of April this year, up from 1.5 million to April 2023.
Of these, 52% of children were in households with three children, 29% in households with four children, and 19% in households with five or more children.
Last month, Starmer said he would scrap the two-child limit “in an ideal world” but added that “we haven’t got the resources to do it at the moment”.
The Resolution Foundation has said that abolishing the two-child limit would cost the Government somewhere between £2.5bn and £3.6bn in 2024/25, but that such costs are “low compared to the harm that the policy causes”.
