- Author, Paul Seddon
- Role, Political journalist
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The Chancellor has said she will not make a “no-funding” promise to lift the two-child benefit cap, despite pressure from Labour MPs to scrap the policy.
Some backbenchers are pushing for the government to repeal the cap, introduced under the Conservatives in 2017.
But Rachel Reeves told the BBC she could not commit to doing so without saying where the £3bn annual cost would come from.
She added that other policies, such as the introduction of breakfast clubs in all English primary schools, showed Labour’s commitment to tackling child poverty.
Around 1.6 million children live in households affected by the cap, which prevents almost all parents from claiming Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit for a third child.
Labour’s landslide election victory has led to renewed calls from anti-poverty charities for it to be scrapped, with Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham also backing calls for change.
Some party backbenchers want to use a debate on the King’s Speech in Parliament on Monday to pressure the new government on the issue.
An amendment signed by a dozen backbenchers has no chance of being adopted given the new government’s huge functional majority of 180 MPs.
But the backbench rebellion will likely be an early test for the new government ahead of its first budget in the autumn.
Labour has placed a prudent approach to public spending at the heart of its election campaign and has imposed a rule that day-to-day spending plans must match expected tax revenues.
Asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg whether she would support calls for the change, Ms Reeves replied: “It costs over £3 billion a year.
“We were very clear during the election campaign: we were not going to make spending commitments without being able to say where the money was going to come from.
“If we can’t say where the money is going to come from, we can’t promise to do it. That’s true for the two-child limit and everything else.”
She pointed out that election policies such as the introduction of new rights for workers, breakfast clubs in primary schools and the creation of new nursery places showed that Labour remained committed to reducing child poverty.
“Previous Labour governments have lifted children out of poverty. It’s in our DNA. We will do it, but I’m not prepared to make commitments without funding.”
“Social cleansing”
But Zara Sultana, one of the Labour MPs campaigning for change, said reversing the change was “not a radical demand”.
Also speaking to Laura Kuenssberg, she added that it was a “question of political will” and accused the chancellor of “not looking in the right places”.
She suggested that increasing wealth taxes and increasing capital gains tax, paid on the sale of assets, could be used to raise funds to finance this policy.
In a sign of the depth of feeling within the party on the issue, fellow MP Rosie Duffield described the cap as amounting to “social cleansing”.
In an article published in the Sunday Times, she added that the “sinister” policy was “an attack on women’s right to choose the number of children they wish to have”.
The charity Save the Children estimates that removing the cap would lift half a million children out of relative poverty.
He argues that the government’s plans for an anti-poverty strategy will not be “credible” unless the cap is removed in the autumn budget.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank has estimated that its removal would ultimately cost the government £3.4bn a year, or around 3% of the total working-age welfare budget.
