Labour considering scrapping two-child benefit cap

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Get our free View from Westminster email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy The new Labour government will consider scrapping the two-child benefit cap after Sir Keir Starmer came under growing pressure to ditch the “cruel” policy. “There are a range of measures that we will need to consider in terms of how we respond to this.” On ditching the two-child benefit limit, she added: “Unfortunately, it’s also a very expensive measure, but we will need to consider it as one of a number of levers in terms of how we make sure we lift children out of poverty.” She also described housing as a “big factor” saying that for “lots of families work doesn’t pay in the way that it should, and … increasingly what we see is that children are growing up in poverty where there is at least one person in that household in work. open image in gallery George Osborne brought in the cap in 2015 The charity Action for Children has called the measure “cruel” and said it “creates and entrenches child poverty”. It’s not the right thing to do.” Ahead of the debate, the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said: “The two-child cap was the Tories operating at their worst, so scrapping the cap would deliver on the promise made to the public for real change.” At the weekend Labour MP Rosie Duffield warned the two-child cap amounted to “social cleansing” and was an “anti-feminist and unequal piece of legislation”.