At 5.19am on 5th July, as the sun rose on the first day of our new government, I wiped away tears and wrote on X: “I’m thrilled the Tories are gone. And heartbroken for the 670,000 kids who’ll be impacted by the two-child limit by the end of the next parliament.” For the first time in my life, I hadn’t voted Labour, incandescent at their insistence on keeping the sadistic, right-wing welfare cap.
Ninety-five days after my anticipatory grief, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) published new analysis revealing that 10,000 children have been forced into poverty by the two-child limit since the election. The poverty-producing policy continues to do what it was designed to: punitively push families into poverty by withholding up to £3,455 a year from the third child on.
This is a big old stick with which to force poor families into having fewer kids—and it's unsurprisingly proved economically catastrophic for people on a low income, a boot-in-the-back for those at the cliff-edge of severe hardship. Like the 10,000 children who weren’t in poverty when Keir Starmer walked into Downing Street, but have since been barrelled over the precipice by a party that claims to believe in social and economic equality.
The truth is that these 10,000 children didn’t have to enter poverty and the 10,000 set to follow them in the coming three months don’t have to, either. It was and is preventable. It’s a political choice and one the government continues to make every day that it retains the two-child limit.
But there is an even more brutal truth: no-one really cares. Do you? Not based on this week’s reaction to the shameful number: not a single newspaper front page splashed on it. The story didn’t lead a radio show or news broadcast. It didn’t trend on social media as far as I saw.
It seems as though 10,000 as a number isn’t enough to shake us, to shake you. So, how about 109? That’s how many kids the CPAG says are pushed into poverty every day by the policy. What about 4.3 million? That’s the number of children in the UK living in poverty, according to government figures. No? Three million, then? That’s the number of children in Britain facing “hardship and hunger“(a measure “well under“ the poverty line), according to new research by Trussell, the charity and foodbank network. Still nothing?
In the days after the election, those of us demanding immediate action on child poverty were told to “be patient”; then again after the King’s Speech; then again after reports that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was “preparing” to retain the two-child limit at the Budget on 30th October; and now—once more with feeling everyone!—after the Child Poverty Taskforce, established by this government, announced that a strategy for its “urgent” work would be released in…Spring 2025 (does somebody need a dictionary for Christmas? “Urgent” comes under “u”, as does “unconscionable”).
Be patient. These two words, a demand from those who have no business making it, are guaranteed to provoke my rage. From people who choose not to see, or care about what I already know. That condemning children to live another hour, another day in poverty is inhumane, cruel, and a stunning moral failure. I know because I spent my early years in poverty, a poverty that saw me climb into a chip shop bin and eat out of it (more than once, apparently), that forced my single mum with no options to make “choices” that scar me still (most notably, the predators I was left with when she worked nights as a barmaid, skint and without childcare).
I know the devastation of humanity, of burgeoning personhood and self-respect that happens when you are living in poverty. The knowledge that you don’t matter enough to be helped or to save, that you are worth not just less, but nothing at all. You can’t tell me it’s not this at the heart of our apathy. Even as the harm of poverty on children’s bodies, brains and hearts, on their socialisation, education and future prospects is evidenced over and over and over again.
What exactly are we waiting for? What will it take to light the fires of outrage in us? What will make us care enough to demand an end to one of the cruellest policies of the modern age, one built to punish and hurt children and their parents. Abolition is supported by most experts and every major children’s charity; it has long been the advice to the government, since it was a government in waiting.
As the biggest single driver of child poverty, retaining the two-child limit will ensure that any other intervention—whether part of a medium or a long-term strategy, both vital—will be undone. Not only will poverty numbers not be reduced, this policy will guarantee that they grow.
So, no, neither the children currently suffering, nor those standing at the cliff-edge, can wait another day for the two-child limit to be lifted. They cannot afford to. Why am I so certain? One final number: three. That’s how many times higher the infant mortality rate is in England’s most deprived areas.
Poverty kills. It kills our children. It kills our babies. And if that doesn’t move you and Keir Starmer’s government, my heart will break once more.
