Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Debate between Scott Arthur and Tom Tugendhat

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

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

I have heard so many well motivated and moving stories about human misery, and the truth is those are the stories of our country. Those are the stories of a country that has tried for over 100 years to introduce a social welfare service to look after the poorest in our community and to do the best for them, and, in various different ways, all of us—and I do mean all of us—seek to do that. We may have different expressions and different understandings of quite how that works, but we do all try to look after those who are most vulnerable in our society.

But I think the division here comes in a very fundamental way, and it comes in the questions that one has to ask oneself when one looks at the way in which this economy, this society and this community grow. When I say economy, I mean not just the bald rows of figures that accountants and bankers add up, but the way in which the Greeks meant it: the way a home works together, the way people interact to bring about a community and to bring about a whole. How does that work? How do we get growth? How do we get investment and reward at the right point so that we actually see the progress that society can bring?

We have seen societies, time and time again, doing the well-meaning thing, and ending up costing everyone. We can read the constitutions and the promises of Governments and nations over the last century and see the human misery they led to—not because they were evil, but because those intentions were not aligned with the reality of a human economy. We have seen it time and time again.

Sadly, although we are now having a debate about the two-child benefit cap and about £3 billion, we are really having a debate about what it means to grow an economy. Although the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), made a joke out of it, the reality is that we are seeing young people paying something like 70% tax—and some are therefore making the choice to go to Dubai, to Portugal, to the United States or to Australia. That connection between young and old people is being broken, with families left in need of not only the economic connection but of the human connection between them.

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will not.

This debate is not just about cash; it is fundamentally about people. There has been an attempt again to pretend that the only interaction between people is that which is metricked, divined and organised by the state, and that simply is not true. It simply is not true to say that, unless the state provides it, it does not count. Yet, again and again, we hear the same thing.

Yes, I know that the Conservative Government left taxes high, but many people seem to have forgotten that covid seemed to increase the debt enormously, and that when some of us tried to vote against various lockdowns, we were accused of murdering various groups, depending on whoever the then Leader of the Opposition seemed to be siding with.