Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Debate between Luke Evans and Meg Hillier

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

[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.