Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit: Two-child Limit

David Linden Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, and to follow the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali). She made a very reasonable speech, but I do want to correct the record. Even as she was speaking, I found an article from 2015 on the BBC News website entitled, “Harriet Harman: Labour to back child tax credit curbs”. I am happy to place a copy of it in the Library, so that the House can correct the record.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) on securing this important debate. Before my election to the House, I had the privilege of working for her for two years, and it was then that I saw at first hand how tenacious she was in pursuing the issue, when no one else had seen it and it was buried at the back of the Red Book. It is fitting that, three years on, she is still prosecuting the British Government for one of the most outrageous policies ever to emanate from Westminster.

Before I speak specifically about universal credit, I want to say a few words about the very concept of the two-child policy. Even three years on and having developed a degree of knowledge in the subject, I still cannot fathom how the policy got through Cabinet, let alone on to the statute books. In the past, the Conservative party could, probably quite justifiably, lay claim to the mantle of being the party of family values, but the two-child policy is so anti-family that I hardly know where to start.

I will start with the Conservatives’ outrageous claim that people should have only the number of children they can afford, as if that is a calculation people make when planning a family. If we followed that logic, we would be left in a position in which the only people who had more than two children would be the likes of the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). What kind of society would we be looking at then?

The two-child policy is deeply offensive to those of us from a faith community. No matter whether it is Presbyterians or Roman Catholics, who forbid contraception, or Orthodox Jews, who for religious or cultural reasons favour larger families, the policy completely disrespects them and their views. I also argue that the two-child policy is short-sighted from an economic point of view. At a time when we have an ageing population, it is important that we also have a growing population that contributes to the tax base and helps to fund public services.

The reality is that the two-child cap is an ideological policy pursued simply to drive a wedge through society and cause a distraction from the real issues. It perpetuates the myth that there are millions of families out there breeding for benefits, when the evidence just does not back that up. The two-child cap breaks the fundamental link between need and the provision of minimum support, and it implies that some children, by virtue of their birth order, are less deserving of support. It is a large direct cut to the living standards of the poorest families of up to £2,780 per child, per year. At a time when people are struggling financially, that is a huge blow for household incomes and shows that the Government are not committed to the very concept of a social security system.

Whether it is the pernicious two-child policy, the medieval rape clause, or the wider shambles of universal credit, which is due to be unleashed next month in Glasgow, families across Scotland are rapidly concluding that social security being administered by the Westminster Government is akin to putting a lion in charge of an abattoir. I argue that a different path can be taken: one that says that social security exists for the good of all in society, and one that values every child, not just the first two. I think that people in Scotland are rapidly concluding that the only path to delivering that fairer society, with a comprehensive, fair social security system free of family caps, rape clauses and universal credit, is through an independent Scotland. Frankly, with policies such as the two-child cap and universal credit, the British Government are only hastening people more quickly along the path to independence.