Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Amanda Hack Excerpts

2nd reading & Money resolution
Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Of the measures brought forward in this Government’s Budget last year, the abolition of the two-child limit is the one that most fills me with hope and more than a little pride, so I thank the Government for listening to so many of us who raised this issue as a concern.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has reminded us, child poverty is not just about children going hungry once in a while, or not being able to buy the designer trainers they want. For every 1% increase in child poverty, more babies die before their first birthday. In fact, this causal link has been quantified, and it amounts to 5.8 additional deaths per 100,000 live births. A baby born into a poor family is five times more likely to die than a baby born into a wealthy one. I ask Opposition Members to consider that when they make their interventions and speeches.

If such children are lucky enough to survive their first year, they will be more likely to suffer poor physical and mental ill health and more likely to end up as an emergency hospital admission. The impacts on their neurological development as they grow are profound. How the brain makes its neural connections changes because of the stress and adversity that children go through. In turn, that affects behaviour, cognitive development and achievements in school. These disadvantages continue into adolescence and adulthood, so every aspect of children’s lives is affected.

We are rightly concerned about the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training, and nearly 1 million 16 to 24-year-olds are NEETs. We must look at the evidence for why that is, not just jump to conclusions for political expediency. There is strong evidence from the UK millennium cohort study that persistent exposure to poverty and childhood adversity, including poor parental mental health, means that such people are five times more likely to be NEET. It is estimated that more than half—nearly 53%—of current NEET cases are attributable to persistent exposure to poverty and childhood adversity. It is not because young people fancy a duvet day, and I really think it is disgraceful that such phrases are repeated in the media. This pattern goes on right through adolescence and young adulthood, and it affects people’s earning capacity, as we have heard.

When in government, the Conservatives were warned repeatedly. I was a shadow Work and Pensions Minister, and I represented the Labour party during the passage of the original legislation, so I know they had repeated warnings. I chaired an all-party parliamentary group that raised the issue, and we engaged with the Faculty of Public Health, which did an impact analysis to identify the harms that would take place. We also did a retrospective analysis to show the damage the policy was having. That legislation introduced not only the two-child limit and the benefit cap, but the benefit freeze—we must not forget the benefit freeze—and the harms those policies have caused to the lives of children, who are now our young adults, are absolutely shameful.

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

This issue is one of the things we have looked at in the Work and Pensions Committee, and the evidence is quite clear that we must remove the two-child benefit cap and enable long-term investment in our young people. Those young people in poverty suffer extraordinarily, and we need to give them better life chances.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Absolutely; my hon. Friend is a wonderful member of the Select Committee, and I thank her for that. In particular, she is very active on our joint inquiry with the Education Committee.

In the space of the 15 years between 2010 and when we were elected in 2024, child poverty escalated from 3.9 million children, or 29%, to 4.3 million, or 31%. To go back to the calculation at the beginning of my speech, the impact on families that have been bereaved as a consequence of the unfortunate position they found themselves in financially should not be underestimated. Like many of us, I have constituents who have grown up under the clouds and chains of austerity, while clinging on to the hope that things could get better. That hope is why we are here on these Labour Benches, and we know how important what we are now doing is in rebuilding trust with the people who invested their vote in us and trusted us to deliver for them.

I cannot thank the Government enough for doing this, but as has been said, it is a down payment and there needs to be more. We can overturn the horrors of the last 15 years. We have done so in the past, and we can again. We have prepared the ground for a better Britain, and this year we will start to see children and their families flourish, but I recognise that this is only the first step. We are lifting 450,000 to 500,000 children out of poverty, which is fantastic, but that is only about 10% of all the children living in poverty, and we need to have our eyes on the remaining 90%. This is an important first step, but we must say that it is only the first step.

The Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and I are looking forward to exploring just how we can do more. As I have previously said, we need to be thinking beyond individual departmental budgets. Tackling child poverty needs a whole-system Government approach, which includes how we budget and how the Office for Budget Responsibility scores Budgets. We need to use evidence much better in our policy planning. Our impact analyses are very narrow, and do not reflect how people experience poverty and the impacts that that has not just on the DWP, but on other Departments. That needs to change.

Finally, when unequivocal evidence is presented to us—some of the evidence is only just emerging; the UK millennium cohort study that I mentioned came on stream only in the last six or seven months—it is right that we respond to it. That is a strength, not a weakness, and it demonstrates humility and integrity. Poverty and inequality are not inevitable; they are political choices driven by values, and when the evidence changes, so should our decisions.

Young People not in Education, Employment or Training

Amanda Hack Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth) for securing this important debate.

Due to the pressure of time, I will focus on one group of young people. At the Work and Pensions Committee this morning we took evidence from two panels about what is driving the increase in NEETs. We heard that post-16 education, employment and training is often predicated on a young person being in a parental home, and that outcomes are severely hampered for care-experienced young people and those in temporary or supported accommodation.

In the year ending March 2024, 14.3% of those placed in temporary accommodation in my constituency were aged 18 to 24, which is higher than the national average. Young people in supported housing do not have security, and they are penalised by the housing benefit taper rate. For those who are unaware, the universal credit of a young person living in supported housing is tapered at 55p for every £1 earned when they start working, meaning that they are restricted in how much they can earn before their universal credit is completely taken away.

After that, separate and steeper taper rates for housing benefit are what really do the damage. The cost of supported housing, including service charges, becomes completely unaffordable for those young people, which means that increasing their work hours can leave young people financially worse off and simply unable to cover their housing costs—that is without the stress of going into education. The essence of the current system, although unintentional, forces thousands of young people to make an impossible choice.

Removing the housing benefit taper rate barrier would create an opportunity for a more sustainable and supportive system for those young people. I would like to hear how the Minister will look at this problem, listen to those organisations and young people on the frontline, and recognise that solving the taper rates for those young people will massively improve the rate at which they are in employment, education or training to secure their future.

British Sign Language Week

Amanda Hack Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for securing this incredibly important debate. I reiterate her point that we are talking about fundamental communication and giving every person the opportunity to learn and to access all the services they so desperately need.

Communication between children and their parents, families, friends, teachers and the wider community will stop deaf children and adults feeling isolated in society. Currently, there is no national programme for early years British Sign Language provision for deaf children in the UK. Instead, parents are being told that their deaf children do not necessarily need to learn BSL. But when children are taught to sign, it opens up communication and removes barriers for them.

One of the most beautiful things I have seen was my niece, who was only seven at the time, sing “Little Donkey” while signing along. That was to ensure that the deaf child in her class was not isolated during the song. Ensuring that all children can communicate with each other is just as important for socialising—there is a barrier for deaf children, but non-deaf children want to engage with them, so it is important that they can communicate together.

As the British Deaf Association warns us, there are serious life consequences for deaf children’s language, emotional and cognitive development, as well as for their general wellbeing. Deaf children are taught that merely coping is the highest they will ever achieve, but there should be no reason to think that a deaf child is any less able to achieve top grades, their dreams or their career goals than any other child. We just need to open up the opportunity for them.

Families have to pay to learn how to communicate with their child through sign language, and often the lessons are framed around receiving a qualification. For most parents, it is not about the qualification—it is about getting to read a bedtime story or ask their child about their day—but the lessons are often not tailored around communicating with their children. Although it is fantastic that level 1 courses are being offered in local libraries and leisure centres across Leicestershire, we need so much more. Most classes in North West Leicestershire, a rural community, are only offered online, but face-to-face learning is much more effective.

In Sign Language Week, it is more important than ever that we recognise the barriers that deaf children and adults face if they are unable to communicate with their peers. There are very simple solutions. Like the British Deaf Association, I believe that deaf children in the UK and their families have a right to learn British Sign Language and receive the linguistic and cultural enrichment that comes with it. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to this incredibly important debate.

Community and Third Sector Organisations: Employment

Amanda Hack Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Paulette Hamilton]

Everybody heard my hon. Friend’s contribution and agreed with what she said.

Earlier this year, I was delighted to welcome the Minister for Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Alison McGovern), to my constituency of Birmingham Erdington. During her visit, we saw the impact of personalised assistance and wrap-around support. At the Witton Lodge Community Association, we heard from young people and local partners about their shared experiences and ideas for expanding opportunities. At Erdington jobcentre, we met dedicated work coaches who are helping residents achieve their goals, but we also heard about the challenges. Residents are waiting over three years to access English language courses, limiting their ability to find work, while others are making two-hour journeys and catching three buses for a 15-minute appointment, only to face harsh sanctions for being a few minutes late, regardless of their circumstances.

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this really important debate. I pay tribute to our local jobcentres, particularly in North West Leicestershire, which are working tirelessly alongside local employers and the voluntary and community sector to ensure that my constituents are equipped to enter the workforce. Does she agree that such support delivered in partnership for our young people will help them to prepare for the world of work?

[Paulette Hamilton]

My hon. Friend makes a critical point. If we want to see people grow, we have to give them the support they need; that is vital. I would not have got to Parliament without the support that I received earlier in my life.

These stories are not unique to the Birmingham Erdington constituency. Many in the Chamber will no doubt have their own stories to tell from their own constituencies, so I urge the Minister to consider the need for greater compassion and a flexible approach to employment support.

It is clear that a one-size-fits-all approach simply does not work. Each community is unique and requires its own tailored support. We must not let rigid structures limit the full potential of initiatives that are already achieving extraordinary things in communities like mine. That is why I urge the Government to take a deep look at how the Department for Work and Pensions operates across the country. By incorporating local variables and using the expertise of the third sector, we can address the skills gap to help people into employment.