Our pre-Budget briefing details how best to invest financial support in children to reduce child poverty and give every child the chance to fulfil their potential.
The harms of the cost of living crisis are multiplied by the benefit cap and two-child limit, flagship policies of the welfare reform agenda which sharply sever the relationship between need and support provided by our social security system.
This briefing, from CPAG, End Child Poverty, the Church of England, and the Benefit Changes and Larger Families project, marks the sixth anniversary of the two-child limit.
This is an important moment for the government to demonstrate how it will support families on a low income. Investing in social security protects those who need it most. This investment is highly cost-effective – reducing child poverty immediately and leading to improved education, employment and health outcomes, including life expectancy.
A family’s ability to get universal credit is often based not on their actual circumstances, but on a fictional version of their circumstances. Welfare rights worker Carri Swann explains.
The Universal Credit (Removal of the Two Child Limit) Bill is a Private Members’ Bill brought forward by the Lord Bishop of Durham to remove the limit in universal credit (UC) that restricts support to just the first two children in a family. The second reading will take place on Friday 8 July.
This briefing summaries the findings of two papers from the Benefit Changes and Larger Families research study which explore whether the two-child limit has affected families’ decisions about how many children to have.
Last month, chancellor Rishi Sunak stood before the dispatch box and delivered his third and most significant budgetary response to the current cost of living crisis. As he announced the measures, he pledged: 'We need to make sure that for those whom the struggle is too hard…and for whom the risks are too great…they are supported… We will make sure the most vulnerable and the least well off get the support they need at this time of difficulty.'