Keir Starmer poised to scrap ‘cruel’ two child benefit cap in bid to lift kids out of poverty

A newspaper has reported the Labour PM is personally committed to lifting the cap.

09:59, 25 May 2025Updated 09:59, 25 May 2025

The Prime Minister(Image: (Image: Getty))

Keir Starmer is preparing to ditch the two child benefit cap to lift hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty.

The Prime Minister has reportedly asked the Treasury to find the £3.5bn needed to axe the curb.

The two child limit was introduced by the Tories in 2017 and applies to some means-tested benefits.

Starmer has so far refused to reverse the policy on the grounds of cost, but the Observer has claimed he is ready to change his position.

One Labour Minister was quoted saying: “Keir wants to end the two-child cap – he thinks it is the right thing to do.”

A tax on online gambling companies is understood to be one option for funding the policy.

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According to the Resolution Foundation think tank, scrapping the cap would lift 470,000 children out of poverty across the UK.

It comes after former Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged the Government to bin the “cruel” cap, claiming it treats third children as “second class citizens”.

He recently met Starmer to push for abolition and Labour MPs are hopeful the cap is on the way out.

In a submission to the UK Government’s Child Poverty Taskforce, Brown wrote: “The rising levels of poverty stem largely from the long tail of austerity and are the lingering result of decisions made a decade ago by George Osborne to create a generation of austerity’s children which deliberately added one million children to the poverty numbers.”

“Every night, one million children try to sleep without a bed of their own,” he added. “Three million regularly skip meals.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting are believed to be in favour of the move.

The UK Government will publish their anti child poverty strategy later this year, but they face a sizable rebellion soon on cuts to disability benefits.

One Labour source told the Record the scale of the rebellion could be limited by promising to scrap the cap and rethink the cuts to winter fuel payments.

First Minister John Swinney, frustrated by Labour continuing with the cap in office, used his Budget to announce its removal in Scotland.

He has said the Scottish Government will make payments to affected families from April next year, weeks before the Holyrood election.

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