Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Luke Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

Fairness matters, not only to those receiving the support but to those making the difficult choices without it. During the short time I have, I will talk about the principles and then the context.

I come to this subject thinking about the publican in my constituency who has two children and who wakes up in the morning, leaves their house in Barwell and goes to their business. They have seen their national insurance contributions rise, their valuation has changed and the tax has gone up on that, the rate relief has been withdrawn from them and they have seen the minimum wage go up. Those are all costs that they are having to consider. What about the independent pharmacist on the high street, who gets up and goes to work in Hinckley, having to face the fact that national insurance contribution costs are going up?

[Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions the local pharmacist. The local pharmacist in my constituency is my twin sister. She put herself through a degree in pharmacy while on universal credit as a single parent of three children. That was not her choice; it was a position that was thrust upon her. What would the hon. Member say to people like her?

[Dr Evans]

I would credit her. She is a credit to the hon. Gentleman’s family for what she has managed to achieve.

The key point I am trying to get to is that, when those people leave their doorstep, is it fair that the choice they have made to have only two children is simply thrown out the window, because an extra £3,650 is now being given to the parent of the third and fourth child next door, simply for not going to work? That is not fair, and that is the heart of the principle.

At the end of the day, the welfare state works best when it is a bridge to work and not a substitute for it. We have often heard about the working poor.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. It is not me who is being referred to; it is the hon. Gentleman.

[Dr Evans]

That is far from the truth. I am simply arguing that we need to be fair to those who need the system to support them and those who contribute to it. I worry that we are pulling at the fabric here.

It is interesting that the debate in the House is slanted towards the Labour view, because they have the numbers. If we look at the public polling, however, we know that, consistently, 60% of the public support the cap and only 30% want it to be taken away. Why is that? Fundamentally, they understand that there has to be give and take. The worry here is that someone will suddenly get £3,650 with no contractual change within society to better themselves.

The money could be better spent. To take an example from the last Government, in 2021 they changed the UC slider from 63% to 55% to encourage work. That cost about £2.5 billion; we are talking about £3 billion today. We have heard from the Government how this will be paid for. It is not hypothecated. The pharmacist I was talking about and the sister of the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) will pay for this, as will the publican who goes out to work. They will see their taxes rise. That is the contract that I am worried about.

[Joy Morrissey]

It is an issue of fairness. The people of Beaconsfield, Marlow and the south Bucks villages have seen their taxes go up and they are seeing those taxes being given to people who are not working. It is unfair.

[Dr Evans]

That is exactly right. The public will stand for a generous safety net, but they will not stand for people not trying to take things forward. I worry that, despite this Government’s talk of employment rights, the chances for employment and the working poor, more people are out of work under this very Government due to the choices they are making. That is fundamental to today’s debate, and trying to leverage morality into it misses the reality of responsibility. Every family in this country make fiscal choices and expect to behave responsibly, and so should the Government who lead them. That is the crux of the matter.

In the time I have left, I will move on to the context. If this were a moral crusade, as we have heard the Prime Minister say, he would have done it in his very first Budget; he would have made that choice. However, as we have heard from other Members, when this policy was put forward after the new Government came in, 40-odd MPs did not vote and seven Labour Members had the Whip removed.

If we are talking about poverty, one thing that has not been raised in the debate so far is the winter fuel payments policy. The Government’s own analysis said that it would put 50,000 pensioners into absolute poverty and 100,000 into relative poverty. So there is a dichotomy here, and it is about choices. Government Members seem to say that if we are going to solve poverty, we need to focus on one area, yet they all voted to take the fuel payments away—[Interruption.] I hear chuntering from the other side about means-testing, but that did not happen until later when there was a climbdown.

The key thing is that these are difficult choices that have to be made. I worry that the public see straight through what is going on. They need fairness in the system. They do not need a vote to be held to try to placate the Back Benchers of a failing Prime Minister. If this truly was the mission of the Prime Minister at the start, he would have done it straightaway.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Let us be clear: this Government came in with a plan to tackle child poverty, but quite rightly set up a taskforce to deal with it under two excellent Secretaries of State, and now with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disability at the helm as well. That is why this policy has happened now and did not happen immediately. It would have been a bad mistake to have dealt with this in a piecemeal fashion. Instead, we now have a whole strategy, of which this is a part, as is helping parents into work.

[Dr Evans]

Why, in that case, was the Whip removed from Labour Members? Why is there no contingency in the Bill to ensure that someone is progressing through the system? We have heard time and again from Members on both sides of the House that it is not only a safety net but a springboard. I come back to my point that if the Government want to make a difference, they could change the rating on universal credit to encourage more people into work, but that is not happening. That would help to support people who are in work but who are impoverished. The last Government brought in the household support fund to ensure that there was immediate support. I am pleased that the Government are bringing forward some form of contingency, but we still have not seen what that looks like. That will be a concern for people.

I shall end where I began. This system has to be fair to those who are getting the support, but also to those who are paying for it. At the end of the day, a family lives within its constraints and so should a country. This Bill does nothing but the opposite, and that is my concern.

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[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I will touch briefly on the Conservatives’ position and then turn to the Bill itself.

The Conservatives have at least been consistent on this policy—consistently cruel. I would point out the level of detachment with the reality faced by so many families in my constituency. The reality for such a high percentage of families is they do not choose whether to have children. They do not sit down and work out whether the money adds up. The reason that the rape clause is in place is because so many people are not able to make those choices. People do not set out with an intention to have a certain number of children; it is about what happens in the circumstances that are created.

[Dr Luke Evans]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I will not.

The reality is that the Conservatives’ position is a very entitled, privileged one, and it does not reflect the majority of our constituents.

[Dr Luke Evans]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I said I would not give way.

Let me turn to where we are today. The Labour party is being a bit smug about the position we are in. The SNP has been absolutely consistent in calling for the removal of the two-child cap. Alison Thewliss stood in this Chamber and highlighted the rape clause at every possible opportunity; I think people got fed up with her talking about it so much, but she was one of the people leading the charge. On that note, I thank those Labour Members who did back removing the two-child cap at the earliest opportunity. I understand how difficult it is to do that, and I appreciate that they were willing to put their principles first.

Today is a good day because the two-child cap is being cancelled. I am sad, though, that the Secretary of State said that he does not regret anything he has said before on this. That means he does not regret saying that it is “open to debate” whether the two-child cap causes harm, despite the fact that he is now saying absolutely the opposite.

I am glad that the Government are finally scrapping this policy. Children should not be at the sharp end of Government decisions, just as older people whose winter fuel payment was scrapped should not be at the sharp end. None of them is able to take these decisions on their finances. None of them can work a few more hours: a six-year-old cannot do that; a pensioner cannot just work a few more hours, because they may be significantly over the pension age and unable to work.

We need to recognise what has been said by a significant number of Members today, which is that so many of these families are in work. People are working hard; it is just that work does not pay—it does not pay enough. If we look at the stats, we see that people feel that the social security system should provide enough support for people to be able to live. We know that people living on universal credit—particularly large families—cannot afford the essentials, even if they are working. That is what this debate is about: giving people the best chance in life.

The Government, however, are not going far enough yet. The strategy that came out of their child poverty taskforce was simply a reiteration of many things that had already been announced. It was a summary: “Here we are. Here are all the things we have announced already as a Government.” It does not have the ambition we need in order to see child poverty tackled. If we look at the stats, we see that the rate of children in poverty by the end of this Parliament will be exactly the same as it is now. This measure will not reduce child poverty over the piece; the same percentage of children will be in poverty as are in poverty now, because the Government are failing to have ambition.

The UK Government should look at the Scottish child payment, as I asked them to do the other day. They should look at the amount of additional money being provided, particularly as of next year, to families with children under one, in recognition of the difficulty and importance of those first 1,000 days. They should look at those uplifts to ensure that people are taken out of poverty, at the baby box, at the Best Start grants being provided to families, and at the tackling child poverty delivery plan that the Scottish Government will bring out in March. Unlike the UK Government’s paper, which simply lays out a number of great things that the Government say they are doing, we have targets in our plan; We are looking at the actual difference that each of our policies make. I urge the UK Government to look at what is being done in Scotland and at the fact that child poverty is lower in Scotland than in any other part of the UK, and to consider what can be done to ensure that children have the best possible start in life, whether they live in England, Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland.

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[Jack Abbott (Ipswich) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is true to say that the Conservative party has been right about one thing today: this is about choices, and I am incredibly proud to be making the one that we are making.

The Conservative party did untold damage to our country, whether it was in hollowing out the criminal justice system, crumbling school buildings and hospitals, record NHS waiting lists or Liz Truss, but the most egregious part of its record was the harm it inflicted on our nation’s children. An entire generation was plunged into poverty.

Poverty is not inevitable. The last Labour Government lifted 600,000 children out of poverty, but the Conservatives’ scorched-earth programme of austerity reversed that trend. Over their 14 years in power, the number of those in child poverty rose by 900,000, and 4.5 million children now live in poverty. In my constituency, thousands of children are growing up in poverty, which is around one in three. Those are not simply abstract statistics; they are the children and families I meet every week.

The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), said that families have difficult conversations around the kitchen table, and she is absolutely right. Parents are worried about whether they will be turning the heating on or skipping a meal; kids already feel the weight of the world on their shoulders before their 10th birthday; and—as was mentioned just a moment ago—parents working two jobs are still unable to make ends meet. It is cold bedrooms, missed meals and two small, patched-together school uniforms—these are scars that last a lifetime.

Much of that hardship and suffering can be directly attributed to the two-child benefit limit. It is a failed, cruel policy experiment and—leaving aside the fact-free nonsense that we have heard previously from the Conservative party—it makes no difference to family sizes, and it does not drive up employment. Indeed, as has already been mentioned, almost 60% of affected families are in work. The two-child limit does not achieve the so-called goals that Tory ideologues pretend to lay out. Instead, it punishes children; all it does is make children poorer, and it is the single biggest driver of child poverty. Perhaps that is why there are so few Opposition Members prepared to sit and defend this morally, socially and economically bankrupt policy.

[Dr Evans]

There are not many on the Opposition Benches—the hon. Gentleman’s party won the last election—but we know that the public support keeping this cap in place. Any poll conducted in the last few years has suggested that, on average, 60% of people think that the cap should remain. Why does the hon. Gentleman think the British public back the cap staying in place?

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[John Slinger]

I could not have put it better, particularly the point my hon. Friend made about enjoying a pint. I too enjoy a pint, but linking something as serious as tackling child poverty to the price of a pint in our pubs is trivialising an incredibly serious topic—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) is speaking from a sedentary position. Would he like to intervene?

[Dr Evans]

I just see the irony of the hon. Member talking about linking this to alcohol, which is a serious problem. Gambling is a serious problem as well, and his party has directly linked this to gambling, even though this is not a hypothecated tax. Could he explain the dichotomy between the two?

[John Slinger]

It is perfectly acceptable and reasonable for a Government such as ours to take measures in Budgets to provide the resources necessary to enact a policy, as this Bill would do, that will lift so many children out of poverty. I think the hon. Member makes a fairly fatuous point, if I may say so.

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[Andrew Pakes]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am wearing a deep heat patch for my bad back, so there would be no fight from me today. I apologise to the House for the passion I have for British values and the hard work of people in my community, who I will stand up for every day against the plastic patriots and others who seek to attack them.

[Dr Luke Evans]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Pakes]

I will try to make some progress.

We have inherited an economic and moral failure by the previous Government, and this Bill will start to put that right by injecting money into the pockets of families and supporting children. It is also why I welcome the youth guarantee and the focus on earning and learning for this Government. The DWP has described Peterborough as a national youth unemployment hotspot, and it is a national hotspot for child poverty, too. Through the work of this Government to address the needs of children in poverty—the expansion of family hubs, the support for breakfast clubs, the investment in schools and early years alongside the investment in further education and apprenticeships—we are beginning to turn the tide.

What matters to the people of my constituency is having the chance to get on in life, to support their children and to have pride in their community and their families. Today, with this Bill, which I hope all Members will vote for, we begin to restore pride in our community by giving dignity back to parents in difficult situations.

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[Dr Luke Evans]

The hon. Lady talks about speaking for the public, but consistently, in all polling, 60% of Brits want to see this policy stay in place. What does she say to them?

[Antonia Bance]

I say to the people in my constituency and elsewhere who have raised questions with me about this policy that in order to will the ends, you have to will the means. Save the Children published this morning some polling showing that 78% of the country want to see child poverty cut. The fastest and most effective way to cut child poverty is to get rid of this punitive, gross policy that artificially inflates the number of children in poverty and creates an escalator to get more into poverty every day, with every child born.

To the Opposition parties, I would say this. I hear you say to these families, “Go out and get a job.” Most of them are already in work. Are you telling those five and six-year-olds—

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[Sir Stephen Timms]

The change for which I think the hon. Lady is arguing would make a relatively modest alteration to the figures. There is a real advantage in the benefit cap, in terms of the incentive to work. We are not proposing to change that, and in the changes that we are making we are maintaining that incentive very robustly. This is a change from the choices of the last Government, which left us with a third of primary schools running food banks.

I echo the tribute paid by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson) to the work of the End Child Poverty Coalition. Members including my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (David Baines) rightly referred to the Child Poverty Action Group, and others mentioned the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. I pay tribute to all those who have campaigned, successfully, for the change that we are making.

The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), said in her opening speech that her party did not accept the relative poverty definition. As we were reminded during the debate, her party embraced that definition in 2010—it was part of the change that was made at the time—but between 2010-11 and 2023-24, even absolute poverty rose. It was higher at the end of that period than it had been at the beginning. That was an extraordinary feature of her party’s record in government.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) for her contribution to the debate and for the work of her Work and Pensions Committee, alongside that of the Education Committee, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), in scrutinising our child poverty strategy. The points that she made were absolutely right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) was, I think, the first to draw attention to the struggle that teachers are having in supporting children in classes. According to survey evidence, in 38% of schools staff are currently paying out of their own pockets to provide essentials for their pupils because their parents cannot afford to buy them. They have full-time roles tackling hardship, taking away funds that ought to be spent on education.

The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) made a thoughtful speech, as he often does, but he was wrong. He said that the extra money would be for people because they were not working. It was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Douglas McAllister), my hon. Friend the Member for Corby and East Northamptonshire (Lee Barron)—in a spirited contribution—and my hon. Friends the Members for Ipswich (Jack Abbott), for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley), for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey), for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) and for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) that the great majority of the beneficiaries of this measure are people in work, and as a result the hon. Gentleman’s argument crumbled away.

[Dr Evans]

rose—

[Sir Stephen Timms]

No, I will not be giving way.

It was very interesting to hear the arguments of the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin). Her party is looking more and more like a cut-price Boris Johnson reunion party, with all the old faces turning up on the Reform Benches. Now they are even starting to sing some of the old songs. The leader of their party has been talking for years about opposing the two-child limit, and just a few weeks ago, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman) wrote an article in which she said that she opposed it. Today they are voting with the Tories in favour of the cap. Those old policies would cause the same damage if they were brought in again in the future.

I remember a time when there seemed to be at least some degree of consensus in the House on the importance of tackling child poverty. Well, there was not much sign of that among Conservative Members this afternoon, and I am sorry that we have lost it. Scrapping the two-child limit on universal credit is the single most effective lever that we can pull to reduce the number of children growing up poor, and in pulling that lever we are helping hundreds of thousands of children to live better lives now, and to have real grounds for hope for their futures. We are supporting their families, the majority of whom are working families, and by enabling the next generation to fulfil its potential we are investing in our country’s success in the years to come.

The Bill is the key to delivering the biggest fall in child poverty in any Parliament on record, and in doing so it will make a very big contribution to the missions of this Government. Our manifesto was summed up in one word—“change”—and this is what change looks like: ambition for families, and for the country.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The House proceeded to a Division.