Starmer refuses to bow down to demands to scrap two-child benefit cap

Keir Starmer refuses to bow down to demands from his own party’s MPs to scrap the two-child benefit cap despite backlash

• Keir Starmer insisted that he had to make ‘tough decisions’ ahead of the election
• The cap prevents claims for universal credit or child tax credit for a third child

Sir Keir Starmer last night refused to bow down to demands from his MPs to scrap the two-child benefit cap.

Despite a backlash, the Labour leader insisted that he had to make ‘tough decisions’ to ensure his party is in a good place to fight the next election.

A furious row erupted among his MPs after Sir Keir said he would retain the Conservatives’ cap, which critics say pushes families into poverty.

It prevents parents from claiming universal credit or child tax credit for a third or additional child born after April 2017.

Responding to the criticism yesterday, Sir Keir said his party was having to make ‘tough decisions’ ahead of the next election.

The Labour leader insisted that he had to make ‘tough decisions’ to ensure his party is in a good place to fight the next election

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair (left) and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer discussed politics during the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’s Future of Britain Conference yesterday

In a conversation with former prime minister Sir Tony Blair at the Future of Britain conference, he said: ‘My first reaction is we keep saying collectively as a party that we have to make tough decisions.

‘And in the abstract, everyone says, “That’s right Keir”.

‘But then we get into the tough decision, we’ve been in one of those for the last few days, and they say, “We don’t like that, can we just not make that one, I’m sure there is another tough decision somewhere else we can make”. But we have to take the tough decisions.’

He later said the party has had to make ‘really ruthless’ decisions since he took the reins to ensure Labour was in a good place to contest the next election.

A host of party figures yesterday called on the Labour leader to scrap the two-child benefit cap.

Backbench MP Stella Creasy said it is fuelling child poverty and may cost more than it saves.

‘The argument that many of us are making is that the evidence in and of itself is this policy is costing us more than it is saving, might it not be better to deal with policy and also get the savings we can put into investing in the economy,’ she told the BBC.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham urged Sir Keir to put scrapping the two-child limit ‘at the front of the queue’ when there is enough money.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham urged Sir Keir to put scrapping the two-child limit ‘at the front of the queue’ when there is enough money

He said he understood that at ‘this point in the electoral cycle, making any commitments that are unfunded would cause issues for any Labour opposition’.

But he added: ‘I think [it would be] a good thing to do, to indicate, to develop the position further to say that “as and when resources will allow this would be a priority”. I think that would reassure people who want to see this issue addressed.’

And yesterday former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, now an independent MP, said he had spoken to many MPs who are ‘seething with anger, particularly as commitments have been made regularly by the party that we would take children out of poverty’.

‘Even the Blair government, which Keir Starmer often quotes, did do a great deal to lift children out of poverty by not having a two-child policy,’ he told LBC radio.

Shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell conceded that Labour may not be able to afford to reverse ‘lots of bad policies’ as there is ‘no money left’ for all the reforms it wants to do.

The Child Poverty Action Group says abolishing the two-child limit would lift 250,000 children out of poverty, at a cost of £1.3 billion.

Ms Powell told Sky News: ‘We’ve opposed this policy, this is not a good policy. We’ve opposed it for many years through Parliament, but we’re now in a very different economic situation.

‘As a famous phrase would go, there is no money left, the Government has absolutely tanked the economy. I don’t know [if] it is dividing the shadow cabinet.’

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