Two mothers who had children as a result of rape or coercion by former partners have been given permission by the High Court to proceed with a legal challenge against the rules on exceptions to the two-child limit in universal credit (UC).
The Chancellor brought good news on breakfast clubs and universal credit deductions but this was not a Budget of bold action on child poverty. The Chancellor missed a golden chance to scrap the two-child limit, a policy that will pull 16,000 extra children into poverty by the time the government’s child poverty taskforce reports in spring.
We welcome the government’s ambition on child poverty but this budget played for time that far too many children and families can’t afford. The spending review next spring will have to deliver much more to make a significant difference for children in poverty.
In the absence of leadership from Westminster in recent years, devolved governments and local authorities have developed their own strategies to tackle child poverty. The UK government has now committed to developing a UK-wide cross-government child poverty strategy, which is a hugely welcome step. What key lessons from experiences of developing child poverty strategies in the devolved nations should inform the future development of a UK-wide cross-government child poverty strategy?
As MPs return to Parliament today, new analysis from Child Poverty Action Group shows 10,000 children have been pulled into poverty by the two-child limit since the government took office. That’s 109 children each day since July 5th.
This week, Cost of the School Day Voice network members from Trinity High School in Rutherglen took part in the launch of Standing Up To Poverty, Anti-Poverty Advice for the Classroom from the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), Scotland's largest teaching union.
Breakfast clubs are a welcome start but meeting Labour’s ambition to end child poverty will need much more from this government. And even with a pledge of no return to the past, austerity is the reality for more and more children as they’re hit by the two-child limit. The policy must be scrapped – and soon - if the Government is to deliver on its mission to reduce child poverty.
As schools look to a new academic year, school leaders, governors, teaching unions, Child Poverty Action Group and others working in schools have written to Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson MP calling for the two-child benefit limit to be scrapped in the 30th October Budget.
