Almost 60,0000 North children to feel benefit of welfare cap removal

THE lifting of the two-child benefit limit will be felt by nearly 60,000 children in the North East, as charities welcome Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Budget decision.

- DAVID DUBAS-FISHER AND KATHRYN RIDDELL

The two-child benefit limit currently prevents parents from claiming Child Tax Credit or Universal Credit for more than two children, and was introduced by the Conservative Government in 2017.

Announcing the move, which is estimated to cost £3bn a year by 2029-30, Reeves said her party did “not believe that the solution to a broken welfare system is to punish the most vulnerable children’.

An estimated 350,000 children across the country could be lifted out of poverty as a result of lifting the cap, according to research by the End Child Poverty Coalition.

The two-child benefit limit affected a record high of 469,780 households across Britain in the year to April 2025, according to figures from the Department of Work and Pensions.

The majority of those households (59%) were in work, and were home to a total of 1.7 million children.

Some 57,530 of those children are in households across the North East.