Andy Burnham has thrown further weight behind calls to scrap the two-child benefit limit, calling it an abhorrent policy that represents the “worst of Westminster”.
The two-child limit, which was introduced by the Conservative government in 2017, only allows families to claim universal credit and tax credits for up to two children.
The Greater Manchester mayor was speaking to the journalist and poverty campaigner Terri White, as part of an on-the-ground video feature for the Guardian. Burnham, who is one of three children himself, said the two-child limit was “arbitrary” and could not be justified.
His intervention came amid mounting speculation that he is seeking a return to Westminster after standing down as an MP in 2017.
It sparked an angry reaction from Labour MPs, including Neil Coyle, who described Burnham’s intervention as “craven”. “I think if I was a voter, I’d be sick to the back teeth of hearing he doesn’t want to be the leader of my city, he wants a different job,” he told BBC Radio 4’s World at One. “Instead of working with the Labour government, he looks like he’s part of the sideshow.”
In a series of media interviews this week, Burnham said Labour MPs were privately urging him to launch a leadership challenge against Keir Starmer and accused Downing Street of spreading “alienation and demoralisation” among MPs.
He argued that wholesale change was needed to see off an existential threat to the Labour party and set out preferred policies, including higher council tax on some homes in southern England and a 50% top rate of income tax.
Raising kids in poverty: The UK’s ‘inhumane’ two child limit
Ministers are examining the impact of the two-child limit as part of a strategy to tackle child poverty. Their recommendation is due to be published later this autumn following several delays, but the government will come under pressure at the forthcoming Labour conference to commit to lifting the cap.
White has spent the past year speaking to mothers across Greater Manchester and elsewhere, about the pressures of life on a low income, and the direct impact of the two-child limit.
A single mother of four affected by the limit who was racially attacked in Greater Manchester last year is also heard in the film saying she believed she was targeted because of the number of children she had with her.
Nationally, 109 children a day are pushed into poverty by the two-child limit, White, who grew up in poverty in Derbyshire and now lives in Oldham, Greater Manchester, says in the film.
Burnham said of the two-child limit: “I never supported it, its introduction. It can’t be defended, because it’s arbitrary. Why does the third kid just get cut out or get less or why do all three if you’ve got three kids? I’m one of the three kids.
“My mum got child benefit for all of us … My parents always said to me something that has definitely guided me in my life – you can never visit the sins of the parents on the kids.”
He said it was not “a crime” to have three children, as his parents did.
“It’s just a ridiculous thing that the state is kind of making these sort of judgmental interventions into families’ lives and saying: ‘Yes, it’s OK for some kids to have a lower standard of living,’ because that is family decisions that their parents took, is absolutely abhorrent.
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“It cannot be justified. It’s the worst of Westminster, that’s what it is.”
The policy had been introduced, he suggested, by politicians who “don’t deal in the real world and “have these myths of families: ‘Oh, yeah, they’re all having kids for benefits.’”
Charities and anti-poverty campaigners, the former prime minister Gordon Brown among them, have repeatedly pointed to the policy as a driver of child poverty, and have called for it to be scrapped.
Starmer has previously said he would like to lift the cap when economic conditions allowed, but has not specified what conditions he expects will make it possible for it to be removed. The Burnham-backed group Mainstream has pushed to have the cap debated at the Labour conference in Liverpool next week.
Earlier this year, in an open letter, Citizens Advice charities across Greater Manchester called on the mayor to use his platform to call for both the two-child limit and the benefit cap, which puts an upper limit on the amount working-age adults can receive, to be scrapped.
Research by the Resolution Foundation thinktank has suggested that removing the cap would cost £3.5bn, but would lift 470,000 children out of poverty.
Burnham suggested there was a good way of reforming benefits, but that child poverty could not be solved until every child had a good home, instead of “thousands” being in temporary accommodation.
He said that as mayor he relentlessly talked “about issues of poverty and helping people with the cost of living”, and that the Greater Manchester combined authority had recently made a commitment not to have children living in temporary accommodation in the region.
However, he asked: “Can a mayor and a combined authority on their own relieve fully child poverty? Well the truth is no, you can’t. But you’ve got to focus where you can make the biggest difference and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
