Scrapping two-child limit and benefit cap ‘would likely improve child health’

By Aine Fox, Reporter7th August 2024News EnglandChild Poverty, Government / Politics, Inequalities, News England, Welfare / Benefits, Welfare Reform

Tackling child poverty through measures such as scrapping the two-child limit and benefit cap “would likely” improve child health and address regional inequalities, new research has suggested.

The Labour Government has been under pressure in its first month in charge to remove the controversial two-child policy – previously introduced under the Conservatives – with some of its own MPs suspended after backing another party’s motion to do so.

Cutting child poverty levels by a third could save lives, prevent some children from going into care and relieve pressure on local authorities and health services, research, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, said.

The benefit cap, introduced in 2013 under the then-Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government as a way of “restoring fairness to the welfare state”, sees the amount of benefits a household receives reduced to ensure claimants do not receive more than the cap limit.

The two-child limit was first announced in 2015 by the Conservatives and came into effect in 2017, and restricts child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in most households.

Researchers from the Universities of Glasgow and Liverpool and Newcastle University estimated, using local authority-level data, the effect different reductions in child poverty might have over the next decade.

They said their scenarios of a 15%, 25% and 35% reduction in poverty were considered “to be realistic in light of the 26% fall in prevalence previously observed in the UK between 1997 and 2010” under previous Labour governments.

All reduction scenarios would result in “substantial improvements to child health” between now and 2033, they said.

An “ambitious but realistic reduction” of 35% on 2023 levels “would be expected to result in avoiding a total of 293 infant deaths, 4,696 children entering care, 458 childhood admissions with nutritional anaemias and 32,650 childhood emergency admissions”, the researchers estimated.

They said: “These reductions would likely translate into significant savings for, and relieve pressure on, local authorities (in relation to children looked after) and health services.

“Benefits are likely to be greatest in the most disadvantaged areas, helping efforts to ‘level up’. Other health impacts that we have not been able to quantify are also likely.”

The researchers concluded that “if policy-makers were to set and achieve child poverty targets for England – for example, through suggested measures such as removing the two-child limit and benefit cap – this would likely improve child health, particularly among the most socioeconomically disadvantaged and ‘level up’ regional inequalities”.

The latest official UK figures, published earlier this year, showed an estimated 4.33 million children in households in relative low income after housing costs in the year to March 2023 – a record high.

This latest research estimated that northern regions of England “exhibited the greatest relative and absolute benefit” from child poverty reductions.

A Government spokesperson said: “No child should be in poverty – that’s why our new cross-Government taskforce will develop an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty and give children the best start in life.

“Alongside this urgent work, we will roll out free breakfast clubs in all primary schools while delivering on our plan to grow the economy and make work pay for hard-working families in every part of the country.”