Draft Tax Credits, Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Regulations 2020

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 General Committees

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

The uprating is welcome, but it is too little, too late. If austerity were really over, the UK Government would restore lost value from the benefit freeze and scrap the two child limit and the rape clause. A 1.7% increase in child benefit does not make up for damage caused by the four-year freeze. If child benefit had been uprated in line with CPI, payments would have risen by 6.5% in nominal terms by 2019-20. Instead, child benefit was subjected to the four-year freeze and payments did not increase over that period.

We in the Scottish National party completely oppose the two child limit on tax credits and the associated rape clause. Some 8,500 Scottish families have already had their income cut by the two child limit, and that figure will reach 40,000 upon the full roll-out of universal credit, bringing up to 20,000 children into poverty. It is abhorrent that, to receive benefits, at least 510 women have been forced to disclose that they were raped. I ask the Minister to reconsider both those items.