Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Debate between Antonia Bance and Graham Stuart

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

[Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)]

I stand here as a proud representative of the Black Country and the trade union movement. Black Country people work hard. We are proud and we are resilient, but 50 years of deindustrialisation and 14 years of Tory austerity mean that wages are low, poverty is high, unemployment is high, economic inactivity is high, and many families have to rely on universal credit to make sure there is enough money to get to the end of the month. I resent the implication that areas like mine, where universal credit payments are high, are somehow “Benefits Street”.

[Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Antonia Bance]

I will get to the right hon. Member.

It was the Conservative party that changed the benefits system to give us one benefit for all circumstances, in and out of work. For the Conservatives to now attempt to invent a deserving and undeserving poor dichotomy, when they made that change to one unified system—which was the correct one—is a little bit galling.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady is, as ever, showing a powerful oratorical style, but it is so easy when doing that to get one’s facts wrong. Unemployment, I am sure she will recognise, was at a near record low when the Conservatives left office and has risen by more than 20% in the less than two years that Labour has run the country. I know the hon. Lady is careful with the facts and will want to retract the point about unemployment under the Conservatives. Whatever other ills she wants to attribute to us, I do not think she can genuinely attribute that.

[Antonia Bance]

The right hon. Member will note that I was making a point about the comparative rates in different areas of the country, including my own, and the impacts of deindustrialisation over the last 50 years, rather than about national rates.

On the Labour Benches, we deal with the world as it is—human lives in all their messy complexity—because everyone is deserving of dignity, opportunity and hope, and every child deserves a decent start. That is why I am so proud today to say this: if you get ill or lose your job, if—heaven forbid—your partner dies, or if your husband beats you up and you have to grab your kids and run, the safety net of our welfare state will once again catch you and every single one of your kids.

Since the day I came to this place and long before, I have argued for this change—I have argued that no child is responsible for the actions of their parents, that the happy event of a little one being born should not tip a family into poverty, and that whether a six-year-old eats tonight should not depend on how many sisters or brothers they have. This day has come because we have a Labour Government, and for that reason alone. I invite everyone sitting on the Opposition Benches who thinks they had something to do with this day to retract their comments and remember who those children have to thank.

Ending the two-child limit helps 5,540 children in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley. Whenever I go on a school visit in my area—where child poverty levels are at 50%, but not for long—I say to that assembly, to those children, “If you have more than two sisters or brothers, please raise your hand.” And I look and the teachers look at the forest of raised hands of children in larger families, and we know what that means. It means that in April, those families will open their universal credit journal or their banking app, and they will see an amount of money that is adequate to meet their family’s needs—not luxury, not extras, but adequate at last.

Some 1.6 million children nationally will be helped by the policy that we will pass tonight—one kid in every nine of our kids helped. Most of the families that will be helped—six in 10 of them—are in work. Loads of them—four in 10—have a disabled family member. Some of those families have kids so young that the parents cannot work. Not a single one of them deserves to live in poverty.

To the mums with three or more kids, using universal credit to top up low wages and high rents: this is for you. Know that far away in Westminster, a bunch of people you elected to stand up for hard-working, low-income families thought of you and your kids, and took out a gross, punitive law that kept you and your kids poor.

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Antonia Bance and Graham Stuart

2nd reading
Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

I entirely agree, and places like the Isle of Wight, with so many hospitality businesses, will pay a particularly high price. We should celebrate and support our wealth creators, not burden them with excessive taxes and regulations that kill the drive to work, invest and create wealth. Yet that is the destructive path that Labour is taking, with a jobs tax planned for every worker’s national insurance contributions in the Budget in a couple of weeks, and this Bill to deter SME employment.

[Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)]

The impact assessment published earlier was 900 pages long, which compares pretty well with some of the impact assessments published under the last Government, a number of which I had the misfortune to read. It confirms that the cost to business will represent less than 0.4% of total employment costs across the economy, and the majority of that will be transferred directly into the pockets of workers, helping to raise living standards and offset the last 14 years of standstill wages. Has the right hon. Gentleman managed to read the impact assessment yet?

[Graham Stuart]

Well, the impact assessment was provided rather late, but it is always good to have a spontaneous contribution to any debate.

Removing the lower earnings limit and the waiting period will also disproportionately hurt small businesses and microbusinesses. That is set out in black and white in the economic assessment, so will Ministers make changes? It is with dark comedy that the Government say that their top priority is economic growth. Labour inherited the fastest growing economy in the G7, with 4 million more people in work than in 2010—4 million. In 2010, by comparison, we inherited a note that said that the money was all gone.