PM can't afford to drop (or keep) two-child benefit cap

Political reporting is sometimes more cautious than it needs to be.

- JOHN RENTOUL

Rachel Reeves was said to have “hinted” or “signalled” that she will lift the two-child limit on benefits in her interview with the BBC on Monday. No, she didn’t. She announced the change.

While talking about the Budget, she said: “I don’t think that it’s right that a child is penalised because they are in a bigger family through no fault of their own.” Her next sentence was: “And so we will take action on child poverty.”

That could not be clearer. At the moment, third and subsequent children born since 2017 into families claiming benefits are in deeper poverty “through no fault of their own”. The only way to “take action” on that is to abolish the two-child limit.

Her announcement was confirmed by Keir Starmer in his interview with ITV yesterday. Admittedly, he was not quite so explicit: “I wouldn’t be telling you we’re going to drive down child poverty if I wasn’t clear that we will be taking a number of measures in order to do so.”

But he wouldn’t be telling us anything of the sort if he and Reeves hadn’t decided to do it.

And a good thing, too. Ending the two-child limit is the single most effective thing the government can do if its aim is, as it should be, to reduce child poverty.