The Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said that the Government will “consider” lifting the two child benefit cap “as one of a number of ways” of lifting children out of poverty
Speaking on Sky News this morning she said that “Unfortunately it’s also a very expensive measure, but we will need to consider it as one of a number of levers in terms of how we make sure we lift children out of poverty.”
“Housing is a big factor … The fact that for lots of families work doesn’t pay in the way that it should, and that increasingly what we see is that children are growing up in poverty where there is at least one person in that household in work.
Yesterday the Chancellor Rachel Reeves was asked why shes choosing not to lift 500,000 kids out of poverty by scrapping the two child benefit cap. She says she won’t make unfunded commitments because that would crash the economy
The Labour MP for Coventry South Zarah Sultana said on the same programme that the cap’s removal should have been included in the King’s sppech last week
Phillipson said that she believes very strongly in tackling child poverty & too many kids are growing up in poverty, but the fiscal inheritance is really tough and its very expensive to scrap it. She also explains Labour are holding a review
She told the progarmme that she grew up in poverty and she knows how it makes children feel & the impact it has.
A report last year found that the benefit cap and the two-child limit has caused hardship to tens of thousands of families, with both policies failing to meet their original aims
