Does the government have a plan to end child poverty?

Following an intervention on the subject by Labour grandee Gordon Brown, Sean O'Grady looks at measures taken in the past and at the options facing current and future ministers

- Sean O'Grady

Calls for a change of thinking on child poverty and an end to the two-child cap on child benefits are trending, as they say on social media, thanks to two high-profile interventions.

The more unexpected of these came from Suella Braverman at the weekend, when she wrote: “The truth is that Conservatives should do more to support families and children on lower incomes ... A crucial reform that Frank [the late former Labour minister Frank Field] advocated was to scrap the two-child benefits limit, [which restricts] child tax credits and universal credit to the first two children in a family.

“If they have a third or fourth child, a low-income family will lose about £3,200 per year ... Over 400,000 families are affected and all the evidence suggests that it is not having the effect of increasing employment or alleviating poverty. Instead, it’s aggravating child poverty.”

Such thoughtful and pragmatic sentiments don’t often emerge from such circles, although Iain Duncan Smith is a notable exception to that particular caricature. Carrying more weight and authority is former PM Gordon Brown, who is also urging the (likely) incoming Labour government to make the change.

Brown calls for help for “austerity’s children” – the more than 3 million young people born after 2010 to low-income families, who “have never known what it is like to be free of poverty”. This “blighted generation” accounts for 3.4 million of the UK’s 4.3 million children living below the relative poverty line. They will, according to Brown, face extra health, educational and employment challenges as a legacy of the “decade-long experiment” of fiscal austerity.