Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been told keeping the two-child benefit cap in place is a “slap in the face”, as hard-pressed parents urge him to scrap the “cruel” limit.
Labour’s legislative agenda, set out in the King’s Speech on Wednesday, made no mention of the cap, which prevents parents from claiming universal credit or child tax credit for a third child.
Thea Jaffe, a single mother with three children in north London, told i she was losing out on £287 a month – £3,400 a year – because of the limit introduced by the Conservatives in 2017.
The 38-year-old said her financial struggles have become more difficult since her 10-month-old son Isaac came along last year.
She told i paying for clothes, food and other things for nine-year-old Moses and two-year-old Jasmine had become more expensive.
“It’s such a slap in the face,” Ms Jaffe said about the two-child cap. “It makes no sense, it’s not fair, it’s just wrong. It’s cruel. Parents shouldn’t be punished for having too many children.”
“I’m so happy to be a mum of three – they’re the most exciting part of life for me. But the struggle is very real. The extra money would make a huge difference to us,” she added.
Ms Jaffe took a new job as an account development manager last year, which pays £43,000 per year.
But she claims she has not been able to claim any maternity pay from her employer because she had not been at her job long enough when her baby was born.
Ms Jaffe told i that over the past year she has turned to the baby bank run by charity Little Village for help with a high chair and other essentials.
She said she was also forced to skip meals on occasion to make sure her children had enough.
“I’ll eat whatever they don’t eat, or have some cheese and crackers,” she said. “I’m more anxious and preoccupied than I would be if we were financially stable.
“There’s so many things we can’t do because we’re so stressed financially. All of my children are losing out because we’re stretched thinner than before. It’s not fair for them.”
Ms Jaffe has been receiving around £2,600 a month in universal credit, and an additional £600 to £700 maternity allowance payment. But she has to find £2,000 a month in rent for the family’s one-bedroom flat in north London.
She told i she hoped things will get slightly easier when she returns to work in September, but she will have extra childcare costs, and is not sure how much universal credit will cover.
Ms Jaffe said: “I’m grateful for the safety net – but it’s not working. If it’s not strong enough to help you out of poverty, you’re just going to stay there.”
She added: “I would say to the new Prime Minister, ‘Find the funds to help parents’. The Government has to prioritise parents and recognise how much they are struggling.”
There are 1.6 million children living in households affected by the two-child benefit cap, according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Earlier this year, the Resolution Foundation think-tank estimated that scrapping the cap would cost up to £3.6bn a year, but would lift around 490,000 children out of poverty.
Sir Keir has been under huge pressure – including from some within his own party – to ditch the cap since taking power. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has said the policy is “wrong” and “needs to be reversed”.
The SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, who plans on tabling an amendment to the King’s Speech to call for an end to the two-child limit, said Sir Keir “has failed his first test in government”.
The four newly-elected Green MPs will put forward their own amendment, calling for changes to be made to capital gains tax to pay for the scrapping of the cap.
However, with Labour now enjoying a huge majority in the Commons, the moves are expected to fail.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said earlier this week that she understood “people are frustrated” regarding the cap. But she said the Government could not make “unfunded spending commitments”.
Becca Lyon, Save the Children UK’s head of child poverty, welcomed the Labour’s King Speech commitments to bring down the costs of school uniform and roll out free breakfast clubs to all primary schools.
“The quickest and most effective change the UK Government can make is abolishing it [the two-child benefit cap] at the Autumn Budget,” she said.
Single Parent Rights founder Ruth Talbot said Labour must recognise that the UK’s social security system had been “decimated” since austerity cuts began in the early 2010s.
“Labour are arguing that they can’t afford to remove the two-child limit yet – but we say they can’t afford not to,” she said.
Victoria Benson, chief executive of the Gingerbread charity for single parent families, said it was “disappointing” that Labour had not scrapped the cap.
“This is a cruel policy that has done little to meet its aim of increasing employment levels, and yet it has left hundreds of thousands of single parent households in poverty.”
Meanwhile, Sir Keir announced that Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson would lead a new ministerial taskforce to work on solutions to child poverty.
The Prime Minister said they would “leave no stone unturned to give every child the very best start at life”.