Children playing football on the street in Luton, August 1, 2025MINISTERS were urged to go further to tackle child poverty as MPs voted on lifting the two-child benefit cap today.
Labour has faced calls since they came to power in summer 2024 to scrap the Tory policy that restricts child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in most households.
Seven Labour MPs were suspended by the party after a backing an SNP motion to scrap the welfare measure in a vote in Parliament that year.
The government had at the time cited spending controls as a reason for not being able to ditch the policy immediately, indicating there would be no change without economic growth.
But following repeated calls from charities, campaigners and many of the party’s own MPs, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in the autumn Budget last year that the government would move to scrap the policy from April.
Addressing the Commons for the second reading of the Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill today, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said that the policy used children as pawns and was “all about the politics of dividing lines” between the “deserving and undeserving poor.”
But Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside Kim Johnson said that she feared the Bill to remove the cap would never have happened without the campaigning of the End Child Poverty Coalition (ECPC) and National Education Union (NEU).
She said: “It’s a shame that it has taken so long to reverse this draconian cap that was driving hundreds of families into poverty every single month.
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