Labour's child poverty plan must promote social justice

Sir Keir Starmer is right to make a big show of the government's decision to restore the child element of universal credit to families with more than two children.

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He and the rest of the Labour Party are right to be proud of the reduction in child poverty that will follow.

The decision was announced in the Budget last week. The wider child poverty strategy was unveiled yesterday. Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary who led the formulation of the strategy, will make a statement in parliament next week.

This is a decision that the Labour government wants people to notice, and an argument in which it wants to engage.

There is an argument to be had. Opinion polls suggest that the two-child benefit limit, introduced by George Osborne as chancellor and applying to children born since April 2017, is popular. In the abstract, people should not have children if they cannot afford to provide for them.

But in reality, there are all kinds of reasons why larger families fall on hard times: relationships break down; illness or death strikes; jobs are lost. And it is worth making the point, as the prime minister does repeatedly, that three-quarters of children in poverty are in working families.