Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Helen Whately Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

Every week, millions of people up and down the country sit at their kitchen table and do the sums to work out what is coming in, what is going out, and what simply is not affordable. Sometimes the conversation may take a more serious turn to one of life’s biggest decisions: “Shall we start a family?” or “Can we afford another child?” Though romantics might love that to be a decision about whether people want the joy of bringing new life into this world, the reality is that many ask themselves, “Can we afford it?” They are not looking to someone else to help them make ends meet or pick up the bill; they are just doing the maths. That is a difficult conversation, but Members have to ask themselves a simple question before we vote: why should people on benefits get to avoid the hard choices faced by everyone else?

Let us be clear about what the two-child cap is and what it is not. The two-child cap restricts the additional universal credit a household can get to the amount for two children, with carefully considered exceptions, such as twins or non-consensual conception. It does not apply to child benefit. It says that there is a limit, and a point at which it is simply not fair to make taxpayers fund choices that they themselves cannot afford to make.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

What does the shadow Secretary of State have to say to my constituent, who found herself single with three children in temporary accommodation and then moved into a one-bedroom flat? In those overcrowded conditions, her youngest got ill, and she had to give up her good job to look after that child. This Bill is a lifeline for her. She wants to go back to work, but it is difficult. She did not choose to be in that situation—it was not a choice. And, for the record, most of my constituents do not have space for a kitchen table.

[Helen Whately]

I am sure that all of us in this House care about poverty and children’s prospects, but the answer is not to spend more, to hand out more money and to trap people in worklessness; the answer is to support people to work, and that is exactly the opposite of what the hon. Lady’s Government are doing.

We all know that bringing up children is expensive and important, but when working couples are having to make tough decisions about whether they can afford to start a family at all, they should not be asked to pay higher taxes to fund someone else to have a third, fourth or fifth child. Someone who is in work does not get a pay rise because they have another child. If we are serious about avoiding a benefits trap, whereby it pays more to be on welfare than in work, we should be honest about what happens if we lift the two-child cap. Benefits for individual households will rise by thousands. Nearly half a million households will receive around £5,000 more on average. A single parent on universal credit with five children could get an extra £10,000 without doing any work, taking their household income to more than £45,000, untaxed—people have to earn about £60,000 to get that income from work! Around 75,000 households will get between £10,000 and £21,000 extra as a result of this Bill. For some households, the extra money will be more than a full-time income, after tax, for someone on the minimum wage.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is an issue of fairness for the taxpayer if people are working hard in a job but being rewarded less than someone else getting benefits? That is why we need to keep the two-child benefit cap.

[Helen Whately]

It is exactly as my hon. Friend says. The extra money that some families will be receiving—without even working—would require such a high income to achieve through work. This simply exacerbates the poverty trap.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately]

I will give way to Members on the Government Benches in a moment. I just ask them to think about the implications of the extra money that people will be receiving. Some people will—frankly and factually—calculate that they can boost their income far more by having children than by working. The best way out of poverty will not be work—[Interruption.] Government Members do not like to hear this, but I am afraid it is just rational. The best way out of poverty will not be work; it will be having babies.

I want to address the argument that lifting the cap is necessary because women are not having enough babies. We know that a declining birth rate is a cause for concern, but falling birth rates are driven by many factors, including changes in people’s aspirations, the poor jobs market, the cost of housing and childcare, the penalties that motherhood imposes on careers and the changing nature of 21st-century relationships. Children are important and we need to have more, but the answer to that complex problem is not, “Here’s some cash for having a kid.”

[John Grady]

We in the Treasury Committee looked at this issue extensively, and I am unaware of any particular evidence that supports the behavioural arguments the hon. Lady is setting out. In any event, why should 95,000 bright and talented children in Scotland be punished by an utterly cruel policy? Is it not fatuous to suggest that people are having children for money, as well as insulting to people in Glasgow and across the United Kingdom?

[Helen Whately]

The fact is that people do the sums. That is the reality of the world we live in. The hon. Gentleman indicated that he is a member of the Treasury Committee, so he must be interested—even though he is looking at his phone—in these unavoidable questions. Where will the £3 billion to fund this Bill come from? Where will the £14 billion over a five-year period come from? We all know where it will come from: taxpayers—either today’s or tomorrow’s—and the men and women who get up every morning, go to work, pay their bills and do the right thing. In the last Budget, as she knows, the Chancellor made a deliberate political choice: to raise taxes on people who work and save, so that millions who do not work will receive more in benefits. Working families already make hard choices. Many already strive and struggle to live within their means. This Bill asks them to shoulder even more.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

The shadow Secretary of State must know that the vast majority of families in poverty include at least one adult in work. She asks how this Bill is being paid for. Well, it is being paid for by increased taxes on gambling giants. Would it not be more truthful to say that the hon. Lady is on the side of gambling giants rather than children in poverty?

[Helen Whately]

Unfortunately, the hon. Lady does not seem to understand that hypothecated taxes are not a thing. What she has said simply does not make sense. The fact is that this Bill will cost the Government money, so it will cost taxpayers money, either now or in the future. That is simply the way it works.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

I have a question too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately]

I would be delighted to hear it.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

We now hear shouts of “cruelty” and “the rape clause”, but I see only one of the seven who were suspended sitting on the Labour Benches. The rest of them kept their heads down and voted to perpetuate what they now call cruelty and the rape clause. How do they sleep at night?

[Helen Whately]

My right hon. Friend has indeed made a significant point about the strange position in which so many Labour Members find themselves. Having previously voted against lifting the cap, here they are now, delighted about lifting it.

Labour Members say that the Bill will end child poverty. They have read that increasing handouts will decrease the metric called relative poverty. However, relative poverty is a deeply misleading measure. It is not an accurate measure of living standards. It tells us nothing about whether people have enough to live on, or whether children will have better life chances. It can get worse when the country gets richer, even when living standards for the very poorest are rising, and it can look better when people are getting poorer. That is not progress; it is levelling down. Throwing money at one flawed metric is not a strategy. In fact, it risks doing the opposite of what Ministers claim to want, trapping families in long-term dependency rather than lifting them out of it.

There is a proven way in which to improve children’s life chances, and that is work. Work allows parents to provide for their families, to pay the rent or mortgage, to put food on the table and clothes on their children’s backs, to set an example to their children, and to create structure and routine in their households. The Centre for Social Justice has found that children in workless households are four times more likely to be materially deprived, but under this Government the number of children growing up in workless households has risen at the fastest rate on record, and has now reached 1.5 million. Contrast that with our record, Madam Deputy Speaker. From 2014 onwards, the number of children in workless households fell year on year. We lifted a million people out of absolute poverty, including 100,000 children, and we drove unemployment down to historic lows.

Under this Labour Government, unemployment is rising month after month, so, sadly, the number of children in workless households will continue to increase. Inflation is up as well, to almost double the level that the Government inherited. Higher inflation means that the money in your pocket is worth less: in other words, you are poorer. Fewer jobs, more unemployment, a higher cost of living—that is what the Government are doing to people. I say this to them: you do not lift children out of poverty by making the whole country poorer.

[Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)]

I am enjoying listening to Members who say they have met constituents who have suffered hard times. I grew up in hard times, on welfare, through the death of a parent, watching my mum go without food to feed us. There is no possible way, given that the cuts to benefits have been pulled, that the country can afford this. We will have no defence of the realm. South Shropshire residents will start going without. There is no feasible way to fund this measure, whichever way Labour Members look at it. Does my hon. Friend agree with me?

[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend has made the important point that no other party in the Chamber seems to realise what a serious financial position the country is in. We have to ask ourselves hard questions about what the country can afford.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

We on the Labour Benches at least understand the historical consistency:186 years ago the Tories made economic arguments against stopping children being sent up chimneys, and 186 years later they are making the same arguments, about stopping children being put into poverty. Same old Tories, nearly 200 years later!

[Helen Whately]

If the hon. Gentleman listens to what I am about to say about the back and forth on this policy on his side of the House, he will see that he should think a bit harder before talking about “consistency”.

So what is this Bill really about? If Labour truly believes that lifting the two-child limit is essential to tackling poverty, why did it take the Prime Minister 18 months to do it? Years ago he called the cap “punitive” and promised to scrap it, but then, once he had secured the leadership of the Labour party, he changed that tune. He said that Labour was not going to abolish the two-child limit. His Chancellor, who is sitting on the Front Bench, said that it was unaffordable. Just six months ago, the Government even suspended the whip from MPs who voted to lift the cap, but now that the Prime Minister’s leadership is under threat, it is the end for the cap. How long will it be before he goes the same way? That is the real reason we are debating the Bill today: we have a weak Prime Minister, running scared from his left-wing Back Benchers.

Talking of the left wing, I expect that Labour will be joined in the Division Lobby later by some of the Opposition Members sitting to the left of me. No doubt the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru will also be competing to see who can be the most generous with other people’s money. Reform UK has jumped on the welfare spending bandwagon too. You will have noticed, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we have not tabled a reasoned amendment today, not because we think that the Bill is perfect—I hope that is clear—but because any amendment would still leave us with a watered-down version of the cap. Other parties have got in a right muddle on this—one in particular—but to us it is clear and simple: the cap should stay. Anything else is a worse policy. Amending the Bill is not the right answer; the House should just vote it down.

First and foremost, I have argued against the Bill on the grounds of fairness, but there is another reason to vote against it. More than 50% of households now receive more from the state than they pay in. The benefits bill is ballooning. Health and disability benefits alone are set to reach £100 billion by the end of the decade—more than we spend on defence, education or policing. The benefits bill is a ticking time bomb. We have to start living within our means. Other parties are simply in denial about the situation that we face in our country. The Conservatives are the only party that recognises how serious this is. We would not be spending more on benefits; in fact, we have explained how we would be saving £23 billion. We would stop giving benefits to foreign nationals, stop giving benefits for lower-level mental health problems and milder neurodiversity, stop the abuse of Motability, and bring back face-to-face assessments. We would get the benefits bill under control, and back people to work.

Labour claims to be compassionate, but there is nothing compassionate about making welfare the rational choice, nothing compassionate about rewarding dependency over work, and nothing compassionate about saddling working families with higher taxes to fund political U-turns. Outside this place, people can see what is happening. They know when a system is unfair. They know when a Government have lost their way. They know when a Prime Minister’s time is up. Members should not be enticed by his final throws. They should step back and do what is right for the country. They should back people who do the right thing, back jobs and work and lower taxes, and back living within our means and raising the standard of living for everyone, rather than backing a policy that will add billions to the benefits bill and trap parents in a downward spiral of dependency. This Bill does not end poverty. It entrenches it, so we oppose it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee.