I will eat my hat – or several – if Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves don’t soon find the money to bury the pernicious two-child benefit cap. The sum is very small: a mere £1.7bn to lift 300,000 children out of poverty. With a quarter of children in absolute poverty, nothing else they could buy at that price could do so much; and it would show their intent to return to Labour’s ambition to abolish child poverty. In her first budget, expect Reeves to find the funds for this, and other public spending not yet announced. Every child taken out of poverty is an investment in the future.
Labour MPs are right to clamour for this. I doubt there’s a single one on those benches who isn’t appalled by the cap: Labour voted with passion against it when it was introduced by the Conservative government in 2017. Some worry that Starmer and Reeves will be deterred by the campaign to force them to pay up, fearing it would signal their willingness to capitulate and splurge on everything else. I don’t think they’re that frit, with the markets and everyone that matters backing them. It would demonstrate surefooted self-confidence.
