Two-child limit not policy for workshy and must be banished, says Gordon Brown

Only the total abolition of the two-child limit is acceptable, former prime minister Gordon Brown said as he branded the policy’s justification as a way to deal with the “feckless” something that was “completely wrong”.

The former Labour leader said a lie had been peddled that “workshy” parents claiming the benefit were having children just to qualify for it and called for it to be “banished from the statute book of our country as soon as possible”.

Mr Brown ramped up the pressure on Chancellor Rachel Reeves to raise taxes on gambling firms to cover the cost of lifting the two-child cap as he delivered a speech to mark the 60th anniversary of the Child Poverty Action Group (Cpag).

The two-child limit – first announced in 2015 by the Conservatives and which came into effect in 2017 – restricts child tax credit and universal credit (UC) to the first two children in most households.

Campaigners argue that 109 children across the UK are pulled into poverty by the policy every day.

The most recent official statistics showed there were 4.45 million children estimated to be in UK households in relative low income, after housing costs, in the year to March 2024 – the highest number since comparable records for the UK began in 2002/03.

Mr Brown said the rise in poverty in the past decade was “shameful, a scar on the soul of our nation, a stain on the conscience of our country”.

He said it is wrong to believe the two-child policy was needed to limit benefits for the “workless” and “indolent”.

He told an event in central London that around 70% of children in poverty are in working families.

He added: “So this account that this is the benefit change that had to be introduced to deal with the workless, the feckless, the workshy and the indolent, is completely wrong, and it should be banished from the statute book of our country as soon as possible.”

The Government data, published in March, showed 35% of children in poverty are in households with all adults in work, and 37% are in households with at least one adult in work.

Just over a quarter (28%) were in “workless households”.

The Government’s child poverty taskforce is due to present its strategy this autumn and it has been reported the Chancellor will make changes to the two-child benefit limit in her Budget announcement this month.

In September, Ms Reeves said she was “determined to lift children out of poverty” and, when asked directly about a report that she will make an announcement on the limit in her November statement, she did not deny such a move.

It has been reported the Treasury is looking at different options including whether additional benefits might be limited to three or four children, or whether there could be a taper rate meaning parents would receive the most benefits for their first child and less for subsequent children.

But Mr Brown called for a complete scrapping of the policy.

He said: “Total abolition is far preferable to any tapering or any other kind of reform that would not abolish the two-child rule in its entirety.

“But there’s another bigger reason why we should abolish the two-child rule. We should not have the stain on the legislative book of the House of Commons and the House of Lords that this prejudice was introduced into legislation almost 10 years ago.”

He said what then-Conservative chancellor George Osborne had “wanted you to believe was that taxpayers were paying money when they couldn’t afford to have children, for other people to have children who were poor parents on benefits who were actually having children to get the benefits”.

He said this was a “prejudice he (Mr Osborne) tried to inculcate into the mind of the country”, but that it was in fact a “fictional account of Britain”.

He said “a lie” had been peddled because it was “politically popular”.

A previously published report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), backed by Mr Brown, suggested reforms to gambling levies could generate the £3.2 billion needed to scrap both the two-child limit and benefit cap.

The benefit cap, a separate policy introduced in 2013 under the then-Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government, sees the amount of benefits a household receives reduced to ensure claimants do not receive more than the limit.

The IPPR said axing the policies could lift half a million children out of poverty and “reverse years of rising hardship for low-income families”.

Polling for the campaign group 38 Degrees, of more than 8,000 UK adults in August and September, suggested almost two thirds (64%) of people support increasing taxes on gambling companies if the money was used to reduce child poverty, with 14% opposing such a proposal.

Cpag chief executive, Alison Garnham, said: “Now more than ever with child poverty at a record high, we need decisive action from Government and the first step must be full abolition of the two-child limit.

“Half-measures and compromises will not shift the dial. The policy must be removed in its entirety or a generation of children will grow up cut off from opportunity.”

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), a social change organisation, estimated that “without action 4.8 million children will be in poverty by the end of this parliament – 300,000 more than when this government came to power”.

JRF analyst Sam Tims, welcomed Mr Brown’s words and said: “Scrapping the two-child limit and introducing a protected minimum floor would be the most cost effective and impactful way to do that this parliament.”

Homelessness minister Alison McGovern, who also addressed the event on Thursday, said she could not give details on what will be in the Government strategy but said it will “consider better incomes for families dealing with some of the costs of poverty where we know there’s a premium to be paid if you’re poor”.

She acknowledged that “child poverty keeps families stuck in a frustrating battle with their finances when they should be making progress in life”.

A Government spokesperson said its strategy will set out how to “tackle the structural and root causes of child poverty”.