WHETHER the two-child cap on benefits causes harm is “open to debate”, a Cabinet Secretary has said as he insisted the Labour-run UK Government would keep the policy in place.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland on Wednesday morning, Pat McFadden insisted that the King’s Speech would not include any changes to the benefit policy, brought in by the Tories in 2017.
The two-child cap prevent families from claiming support for their third or subsequent children, unless they can meet certain conditions such as proving that the child is a product of rape.
According to the Resolution Foundation, the limit affected 450,000 families across the UK in April 2024 – a number which is set to grow. The policy will “push the majority of large families below the poverty line by the end of the parliament”, the foundation warned.
And children's charity Barnardo's chief executive Lynn Perry has said the two-child cap is "one of the biggest policy drivers of child poverty".
However, speaking on Good Morning Scotland, McFadden defended keeping the policy in place and said whether it actually caused harm was up for debate.
McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, made the remark even after being told that Scottish Labour had called the cap “wrong” and Gordon Brown had said it condemns children to poverty.
Asked if Labour would scrap the two-child cap, McFadden said: “Well, we were asked a lot about this during the election and it's not something we promised to do during the election campaign.
“So, what today's speech will be about is about implementing the things that we did promise to do. And on that, as on many other issues, it has to be governed by the economic inheritance that you have, which is the most difficult in living memory.
“We were pretty candid about that during the election. We said we wouldn't promise things if we couldn't see how they would be paid for. That remains true two weeks after the election, just as it was two weeks before it.”
McFadden was then told: “The Resolution Foundation put the cost of lifting the cap between £2.5 and 3.6 billion pounds in 2024-25, and they say that is low compared to the harm that the policy is causing. Do you accept the policy is causing harm?”
After repeatedly declining to answer and repeatedly being pushed, McFadden said: “Look, whether it causes harm will be open to a debate.
“But what I'm about today is implementing what we said we’d do during the election. Not things that we didn't say we’d do.”
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn also appeared on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland on Wednesday.
Flynn began by saying that McFadden's comments had been "quite an extraordinary thing for a Labour politician ... given that it's of course, keeping hundreds of thousands of children right across the UK in poverty".
Labour refusing to accept that a policy that keeps children in poverty causes ‘harm’. Astonishing. pic.twitter.com/Mneznn8w8T
— Stephen Flynn MP (@StephenFlynnSNP) July 17, 2024
Flynn further said he “hopes and expects” some Labour MPs will back his party’s amendment to the King’s Speech calling for an end to the two-child benefit cap.
Wednesday’s speech is expected to include around 40 bills with a heavy emphasis on trying to push economic growth, the first of Keir Starmer’s five “missions for national renewal”.
Flynn said there is still time for Labour to “do the right thing”.
He said: “Should they choose not to act, as it appears to be the case, this no longer sits as a Tory two-child cap, it’s a Labour two-child cap and voters in Scotland will need to reflect on that.”
Last month, before becoming Prime Minister, Starmer said he would scrap the policy “in an ideal world”, but added that “we haven’t got the resources to do it at the moment”.
Separately, the four newly-elected Green MPs will put forward their own amendment on the two-child cap.
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer MP said: “Every day we have children going hungry, unable to concentrate in school or struggling to ascertain even the very basics – this is the real world impact of child poverty.
“So today we’re offering Labour a positive, fairer taxation that will allow them to redistribute money from some of the wealthiest to some of the very poorest. This is a political choice that they must now make.”
