Andy Burnham has urged Keir Starmer to eliminate the two-child benefit limit, stating there is no ethical justification for the policy to persist. This plea comes as the government contemplates either scrapping or weakening the Tory-era policy, which has been criticized for ensnaring hundreds of thousands of children in poverty.
The Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, and Liverpool City Region Mayor, Steve Rotheram, have advocated adopting Gordon Brown’s proposal to address high levels of child poverty by increasing gambling taxes at the Budget. During a conversation with The Mirror’s Real Britain columnist Ros-Wynne Jones, Burnham emphasized the importance of removing the two-child cap on benefits to alleviate child poverty in various regions.
Burnham highlighted that abolishing the policy would not only uplift many children out of poverty but also revitalize the party’s morale. He criticized the Labour party’s decision to withdraw the whip from seven MPs who opposed the two-child benefit limit last summer, stating that it contradicted the principles upheld during the Brown and Blair era.
Recent analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) revealed that eliminating the policy could lift 630,000 children out of poverty in the long run. The government is anticipated to release the results of its child poverty review later this year, which includes an evaluation of the two-child benefit limit.
Steve Rotheram expressed his admiration for Mayor Sadiq Khan’s policy on free school meals, emphasizing the financial challenges faced in implementing a similar initiative due to budget constraints. Burnham also urged Labour to prioritize addressing the cost-of-living crisis by reducing people’s expenses, such as transportation fares and council tax, to alleviate the financial burden on individuals grappling with high living costs.