In dodging calls from his party to remove the two-child cap, Sir Keir Starmer is making one of his first noteworthy mistakes as Prime Minister. Both John McDonnell, the far-left former shadow chancellor, and Anas Sarwar, the soft-left Scottish Labour leader, have called for the Coalition-era policy to go. The cap limits the payment of Universal Credit to a family’s first two children, with subsequent offspring meriting no additional payment. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, keeping the cap will mean an extra 670,000 children worse off by the end of this Parliament while scrapping it would reduce relative child poverty by half a million. The annual cost of abolishing the cap would be around £3.5 billion, roughly half the cost of Rishi Sunak’s £20 Universal Credit uplift during Covid.
The cap will mean an extra 670,000 children worse off by the end of this Parliament
However, the Prime Minister will say only that: ‘There is no silver bullet.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in