Sir Keir to face pressure from MPs to scrap two-child benefit cap

Sir Keir Starmer will face pressure from MPs in the Commons, including from inside his own party, to change his position and abolish the two-child benefit cap on Tuesday.

A King’s Speech debate could end with a vote on the matter on Tuesday evening if Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle selects one of several amendments that have been tabled.

The Prime Minister has said there is “no silver bullet” to end child poverty and acknowledged the “passion” of Labour MPs considering rebelling over the continuation of the policy that affects some 1.6 million children.

The SNP has tabled an amendment, which it says is backed by Plaid Cymru, the Green Party, the SDLP, the Alliance Party, and independent MPs including Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour MPs have a choice today. They can lift children out of poverty by voting for the SNP amendment to abolish the cap - or they will push children into poverty by keeping it in place

SNP Westminster Leader Stephen Flynn MP said: “Keir Starmer must not fail his first major test in government by refusing to scrap the cap. It is the bare minimum required to tackle child poverty – and to begin to deliver the change that people in Scotland were promised.

“Labour MPs have a choice today. They can lift children out of poverty by voting for the SNP amendment to abolish the cap – or they will push children into poverty by keeping it in place.

Kim Johnson and Rosie Duffield are among the Labour MPs who have urged Sir Keir to change tack, while Conservative Suella Braverman spoke on Monday to support scrapping the limit.

Former home secretary Ms Braverman acknowledged that her party had introduced the cap, but said it was “aggravating child poverty, and it’s time for it to go”.

She said: “Now I know about the argument ‘don’t have children if you can’t afford them’. For me that’s not compassionate. It’s not fair. It’s not the right thing to do.”

The cap was introduced by then-Conservative chancellor George Osborne in 2015 and restricts child welfare payments to the first two children born to most families.

Against the background of rising child poverty – with more than four million children now living in low-income households – the Prime Minister has been urged by charities, opposition parties and some of his own MPs to abolish the limit.

The Prime Minister has so far suggested the state of the public finances means they cannot afford to axe the benefit limit unless economic growth is secured first.

Labour backbencher Kim Johnson told the Commons on Monday that the “punitive policy needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history where it belongs.”

Labour MP Rosie Duffield said in a Sunday newspaper that the two-child benefit cap amounts to “social cleansing” and is an “anti-feminist and unequal piece of legislation”.

“It legislates against women’s autonomy over their own bodies, the exact opposite of anything that could possibly be described as a Labour Party value,” she wrote in an article for The Sunday Times.