If Birmingham Labour MPs care about city's poorest kids, they need to get 2-child benefit cap scrapped
It's shocking it wasn't in their manifesto in first place
Hi everyone and I hope you are doing well, despite the excuse of a summer!
Two things on my mind this weekend - one of them concerns the way Labour in Birmingham are still seeking to control the commentary of its councillors, with limited success.
But first I’m going to return to a topic already covered in my newsletter before, because it’s so bloody important. I’m likely to keep banging on about it for some time yet because, well, it’s kids that are suffering.
Child poverty is the biggest shame in our city, and there’s plenty of competition. In some neighbourhoods, as many as three in four kids are growing up in impoverished households - the majority of them with parents who are working.
Living in a poor household affects every single aspect of their life, from their health to their educational prospects, their likelihood of being a victim of crime to their chances of dying early. The data and evidence could not be more transparent.
And one of the most significant drivers today of keeping struggling families locked into poverty? The two child benefit limit, introduced by the Conservatives in 2017.
At the time the two child cap came in, around 71,000 families were affected. Now that’s risen to a record high of 450,000. And the majority of those affected are in work (270,000), though likely trapped in low pay and uncertain jobs.
I’ve had sight of a local breakdown of the new data that shows how many families with more than two children are directly affected around here and it really makes stark reading. In the West Midlands, more than 35,000 families who claim universal credit or child tax credits have three or more children. Birmingham accounts for most of them - that’s 17,000 families.
In Sandwell there are 4,300 eligible claimant families with 3+ kids; in Walsall there are 3,600 affected families. Another 3,000 families are affected in Wolverhampton, 2,700 in Dudley and 1,300 in Solihull.
And the MAJORITY of them are working. Remember that.
Evidence is piling up that shows the direct impact on children of what is a cruel policy. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said of the policy that it is "condemning children to poverty."
“We know that the two-child limit is a failing policy that actively pushes families into poverty,” said Joseph Howes, chair of the End Child Poverty group. He added that scrapping the policy would move “the needle on child poverty overnight”.
Yet in the face of sustained pressure from anti-poverty charities, influential thinktanks and religious leaders including the archbishop of Canterbury, the Labour leadership are still holding firm. They are still refusing to end a policy which is holding down children in poverty.
And worse, in a city like Birmingham, so crippled by child poverty, hardly any significant Labour people are coming out swinging for it.
Up in Liverpool, Labour’s Kim Johnson has made a case for it. Writing in LabourList, she has been unequivocal. It has to go.
Yet in the run up to the election, several local Labour candidates and supporters were vague at best. Why were backbenchers not putting more pressure on the Starmer circle to include lifting the cap in the manifesto? Where did child poverty champions like Jess Phillips stand?
Mostly, however, they were quiet. Liam Byrne, MP for Hodge Hill and Solihull North, was a notable exception - when asked about it he spoke out witheringly about how it has to be a first priority or otherwise ‘what was the Labour Party for?’
He framed it like this: “I don’t think you can possibly have a Labour government that oversees an increase in the number of people using foodbanks. I don't believe Labour MPs or voters will stand for that...that's why we need to end the two child benefit cap.”
But Labour candidates were reduced to whispering in the ears of journalists or anyone else who asked that ‘of course’ Labour would lift the cap - but it would be ‘electoral suicide’ to say so. “The Tories would have a field day,” said one Labour stalwart locally, suggesting the fabled “middle England” wouldn’t stomach the party raising welfare payouts.
So, let’s deceive them instead and bring it in ‘undercover’? That sounds disingenous too.
Jess Phillips - then still outcast over the Gaza vote, now back in the Government after her promotion earlier this week to Home Office minister - felt that we should all just trust that Labour would fix child poverty. “Tony Blair didn’t pledge to end child poverty when he was standing for election - but that’s what happened under Labour. We will do so again but it will take time.”
She also argued that affected families themselves were not asking for the cap to be lifted, as if that meant it wasn’t that big a priority for them. I would argue that’s at best disingeneous.
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