Churches support call to end benefit cap
300,000 children who would be lifted out of poverty if the two-child benefit cap was scrapped
A Quaker-hosted anti-poverty network has backed a call to end the two-child limit for benefits.
The two-child cap means families are not allowed to access support through Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit, for more than two children, if children were born after April 2017.
Katherine Hill, strategic programme manager of 4in10 London’s Child Poverty Network, told the Friend: ‘The two-child limit affects over 200,000 children in London alone – pushing them into or deeper into poverty; threatening their rights to enough nutritious food and a warm, secure home and impacting their futures. There is no evidence it is achieving its aim of incentivising people into work, indeed many families affected already have at least one member in work. The policy must be scrapped immediately as part of a wider strategy to eradicate child poverty.’
The network has been hosted by Quaker Social Action (QSA) since January 2024 and is part of the ‘All Kids Count’ campaign against the two-child limit, coordinated by the End Child Poverty Coalition. Churches around the UK have also backed the call to end the two-child limit by signing an open letter, coordinated by Church Action on Poverty. ‘Churches have always been among the most vocal critics of the policy. The effort is being stepped up now because the new Government has launched a Child Poverty Strategy, and there are hopes that Ministers might heed the growing calls. We hope the policy will be removed in the Budget in October,’ said the charity. ‘Today, 1.6 million children in 440,000 households are affected, and families are being denied access to £3,455 a year.’
According to the open letter: ‘There is widespread consensus that ending this policy would be the single most effective step the Government could take towards ending poverty, immediately freeing 300,000 children from poverty.’
A recent study found scrapping the two-child benefit cap, among other anti-poverty measures, could save hundreds of lives a year and avoid thousands of admissions to hospital. It would substantially cut the number of infant deaths and children in care, as well as rates of childhood nutritional anaemia and emergency hospital admissions. A poverty reduction of thirty-five per cent on 2023 levels could avoid 293 infant deaths; 458 childhood admissions with nutritional anaemias; and 32,650 childhood emergency admissions, said the researchers from the universities of Glasgow, Liverpool and Newcastle.
The cap was announced in 2015 by George Osborne, the then-chancellor, and came into effect in 2017. ‘The 4in10 London’s Child Poverty Network is not a separate charity to QSA but operates independently, rather than as one of QSA’s own services,’ said Katherine Hill.
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