The two-child benefit cap was introduced by the Conservative party 10 years ago. Its period in office saw child poverty rise to over 4 million and one in three of our children arriving at primary school not ready to learn. As soon as the Secretary of State and I were appointed, we got to work to establish our child poverty taskforce, as promised in Labour’s manifesto, and those efforts are ongoing.
A BMJ study found that people in food poverty have diets with worse health outcomes including more fat, sugar and salt, so what conversations has the Minister had with the Health Secretary about how lifting the two-child benefit cap could improve diet and reduce costs for the NHS?
The Health Secretary and I talked about child poverty many times as we sat on the Opposition Benches watching the situation for our kids get worse and worse every year. The Member makes a very serious and important point about the wide-ranging consequences of poverty and, if I may, I would encourage him to submit the evidence he mentioned to the child poverty taskforce so that we can take full account of it.
One in two children in my constituency live in poverty. There is a lot of speculation swirling around the excellent child poverty taskforce, which I applaud the Government for establishing, including that the cap could be lifted for under-fives, which would affect fewer than 20,000 households compared with the 440,000 households which currently are affected by the two-child benefit cap. Can the Minister reassure the House and the country that the child poverty taskforce is looking to support all children in poverty, whatever decisions it comes up with, and not just a small segment of them?
Yes, I can. All children matter. We are taking account of a considerable range of different policy options, carefully working through the impact that they would have, but all the children in this country matter.