LORD URGES RADICAL CHANGE FROM LABOUR

Kinnock's call to scrap benefit limit

- BY ASHLEY COWBURN

NEIL Kinnock has said the controversial two-child benefit limit should be scrapped to lift hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty.

The former Labour leader blamed the Tories for undoing Gordon Brown's proud legacy of cutting child poverty.

He said after 14 years the Conservatives left the country in a state that would “make Charles Dickens furious” with “intolerable” hardship. Getting rid of the two-child benefit limit one of the most severe cuts to the welfare state by austerity chancellor George Osborne would be the “immediate and direct way of trying to correct the conditions the Government inherited,” he said.

The policy, which restricts Universal Credit and Child Tax Credits to the first two children, has been blamed by charities for trapping kids in poverty.

Labour MPs are calling on Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to axe the policy at the Budget in the autumn, or as part of an ongoing child poverty review.

The Scottish Government has vowed to end the cap from March 2026.

Families will be able to apply for a new “Two Child Limit Payment” from which will provide financial support equivalent to the Universal Credit child payment for those affected by the cap.