Working Tax Credit and Universal Credit: Two-Child Limit

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Alison Thewliss

Thursday 21st April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely agree. That poverty is deep and enduring, and prevents those children from reaching their full potential. We cannot forget the choices that many families are having to make because they just do not have enough money coming in.

No one can predict the course of their lives, certainly not the course of their children’s lives, and nobody can plan for absolutely every eventuality—it is just not the reality of life. CPAG estimates that, during the pandemic, an additional 15,000 families, who never envisaged losing their jobs and incomes in a global health crisis, were affected by the two-child limit, as they claimed universal credit for the first time. That includes people who worked in sectors that shut down and have yet to recover, people who tragically lost their partners to covid and people who still suffer the effects of long covid. Domestic abuse rates increased during the pandemic, which resulted in some families separating for good. In each of those scenarios, families with more than two children were not afforded the dignity of the support they required, because the Conservatives made a judgment back in 2015 about the appropriate size of a family for benefit claimants.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate, which I agree is very important. In Putney, Roehampton and Southfields, families are having to go to food banks more often. I have spoken to Wandsworth Foodbank and Little Village, which helps local families, and they have said that the thing that would make the most difference in stopping poverty in my area is scrapping the two-child benefit cap. Does she agree that the Minister should look into this, assess the impact and scrap it as soon as possible?

[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member, and she makes a good point about food banks. Essentially, the Government are saying that they will pay to feed and clothe only two children, and not provide for the rest of those families. Either that money gets very stretched or families cannot stretch any further and they end up going to food banks. In a country as wealthy as this one, families should not have to go to food banks just to put food on the table for their children.

I bring the debate today to highlight the enduring flaws in this UK Tory Government’s two-child limit and to ask them to end it before things get even worse for families struggling today.