Labour’s latest response to a vicious DWP policy is borderline sinister

Charities such as Save the Children UK and Citizens Advice have warned that child poverty will rise to the highest level since records began unless Labour scrap the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) two child benefit cap. Labour’s response? Shocking.

Labour: impoverishing children is a “matter of fairness”

In a letter to the prime minister, they refer to analysis from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) that shows the DWP two child benefit cap will increase the number of children living in poverty from 4.5 million to 4.8 million.

In response, a Labour source told the Guardian that ministers have ruled out scrapping the cap because it’s

popular with key voters, who see it as a matter of fairness

That’s gross. How is it a matter of “fairness” that children grow up in poverty? That’s a turn of phrase you might expect from the Conservative party, but this is what Labour are doing in power.

And apparently, if something is ‘popular’ it should be followed. Okay then: nationalise key utilities such as water and energy, because they are very popular policies across the electoral base.

And there’s also a key difference here. Public ownership of essentials makes total sense because we all need to use them every day. So it’s more expensive to rent them from private companies, rather than owning them ourselves. Whereas, the DWP two child benefit cap defies all logic when you consider the realities of the UK job market. As of March, there are 781,000 vacancies in the UK. But there are 1.57 million unemployed people. And a further 9.22 million are economically inactive p4 (also unemployed, but not actively looking for a job).

So Labour’s narrative over the DWP two child benefit cap is an alternative reality where there are 10 million more jobs in the country then there actually are. And that’s compounded when you consider that 59% of the 450,000 households impacted by the cap have at least one working parent.

Scrap the DWP two child benefit cap

Without a programme of training and job sharing, there is no alternative to unemployment DWP welfare. The growth at all costs mantra won’t solve it, given the job deficit is around 10 million. And besides, do we need to keep producing and consuming more and more stuff? Surely it’s a question of quality, with positives such as technological advancement and negatives such as tobacco and fast food (guilty pleasures for some, but not industries we want to see booming).

In the letter to Starmer, the charities, including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Trussell, write:

Ensuring that fewer children are in poverty at the end of this parliamentary term than at the start will require a direct investment in family incomes via the social security system. As the bare minimum, this must start with scrapping the two-child limit and the benefit cap. The two-child limit pushes more and more children into poverty every day and will act as a brake on any other action taken by government to reduce poverty.

From the 2024 election to October, Labour’s maintenance of the DWP two child benefit cap had already plunged 10,000 children into poverty, previous analysis from CPAG shows.

The charities also urged a long-term focus, given there are already 4.5 million children in poverty:

The strategy will also need to set targets to reduce child poverty over the next 10-20 years, laying the foundations for further policy interventions to tackle child poverty across different parts of government, and helping to maintain focus throughout this parliament and beyond.

The DWP two child benefit cap also has a negative impact on the economy through reducing demand for children’s products like books and toys. Scrapping it is a no-brainer, but the bureaucrats in government are ideologically wedded to a broken status quo.

Featured image via the Canary