Scrapping benefit cap would 'lift millions out of poverty'

A cross-party commission including former welfare ministers is urging the government to scrap the two-child benefit limit as part of an ambitious "once in a generation" plan to lift millions of people out of poverty.

- Patrick Butler

The Poverty Strategy Commission said billions of pounds of investment - including a boost to the rate of universal credit - was needed to reverse record levels of poverty in the UK and tackle longstanding failures over rising hardship and destitution.

The commission's report is a challenge to the government as it prepares to announce its own child poverty reduction strategy, amid concerns Treasury-imposed constraints will water down any changes that push up benefit spending.

The commission said its wide-ranging proposals would lift 4.2 million people out of poverty, including 2.2 million people in "deep poverty" - defined as household income at least 50% below the official poverty line and equivalent to £11,013 a year for a single parent with two children.

Labour ministers including Stephen Timms and Miatta Fahnbulleh, as well as the Department for Work and Pensions policy adviser Graeme Cooke, were members of the commission before joining the government. The prisons minister, James Timpson, is a commission adviser.

The independent commission was launched three years ago with the ambition of creating a cross-party consensus on tackling rising hardship. Its findings offer an authoritative mainstream policy blueprint for tackling what it has called the "societal failure" to tackle poverty.