Report calls for removal of two-child benefit cap

FRESH report has called on the Government to reduce the two-child benefit cap as it finalises plans to tackle child poverty in regions like the North East.

- GRAEME WHITFIELD

A report by the independent and cross-party Poverty Strategy Commission makes a series of calls to tackle poverty among children, adults and pensioners.

They include scrapping the controversial two-child benefit limit, with the commission saying that it is “clearly a concern that more than one in three of the UK’s future citizens are growing up in poverty, with all of the damage to educational outcomes and future health and employment prospects that comes with it”

Recent figures showed that more than 120,000 children in the North East mayoral area - nearly a third of its young people - are growing up poor, plus nearly 50,000 in the Tees Valley. Many of those are in working families and campaigners believe the numbers can be significantly reduced by abolishing the cap.