\n<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer has said he wants to reduce child poverty by the end of the parliament, as the prime minister comes under mounting pressure to end the two-child benefit cap.<\/p>\n
The prime minister told MPs on Monday it was his aim to cut the number of children living in poverty by the time of the next election, going further than the manifesto pledge his party made before last year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n
Starmer\u2019s target will renew focus on ending the two-child limit on universal credit or child tax credit claims, which poverty campaigners say is the most efficient way to take children out of poverty but would cost an estimated \u00a33.6bn a year.<\/p>\n
Speaking to members of parliament\u2019s liaison committee, the prime minister said: \u201cWe\u2019ve set up a designated taskforce to look specifically to child poverty, to devise our strategy, and I have oversight of that, so that everybody can see it\u2019s a No 10\/prime minister priority in what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked by Meg Hillier, the chair of the Treasury select committee, whether it was his aim to cut child poverty this parliament, he replied: \u201cYes. The last Labour government got child poverty down, and I want to get child poverty down.\u201d<\/p>\n
His comments go further than the 2024 party manifesto, which promised to \u201cdevelop an ambitious strategy to reduce poverty\u201d. But the government remains unclear on how it intends to meet the prime minister\u2019s target, with the results of the child poverty taskforce expected later this year.<\/p>\n
Starmer has previously said he wants to end the cap \u201cwhen fiscal conditions allow\u201d but ministers said this had been made harder recently by the government\u2019s decision to abandon planned cuts to disability benefits in the face of a Labour rebellion.<\/p>\n
Child poverty rates have been rising for most of the past decade, and nearly a third of children now live in poverty, according to campaign groups.<\/p>\n
Ending the two-child cap, which was imposed by the Conservatives in 2017, would be a costly measure but one that experts say would have the most direct impact on poverty rates per pound spent. The Child Poverty Action Group says scrapping it would take 350,000 children out of poverty overnight \u2013 reducing the rate by seven percentage points.<\/p>\n
Starmer came under heavy criticism during Monday\u2019s hearing with the chairs of all 32 Commons select committees \u2013 even from his Labour colleagues \u2013 over the government\u2019s record on poverty and living standards.<\/p>\n
Debbie Abrahams, the chair of the work and pensions select committee, said she had been \u201cashamed\u201d by the initial proposals in the government\u2019s welfare bill, against which she helped lead the rebellion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was poor legislation,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was designed to save money for the Treasury by cutting support to sick and disabled people. It was so far removed from Labour values of fairness and social justice, let alone compassion and common decency. I have to say I felt ashamed.\u201d<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n
Get the day\u2019s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning<\/p>\n
Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Liam Byrne, the chair of the business select committee, said government policies were helping to make the poorest households worse off. \u201cThe bottom 40% of households, they\u2019re not going to be better off in three years\u2019 time,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re actually going to be \u00a31,200 a year worse off.\u201d<\/p>\n Byrne urged Starmer to commit to raising capital gains tax to give lower-paid people a tax cut \u2013 something the prime minister declined to rule out.<\/p>\n Starmer did however say he wanted to sign further deals with the EU after the government\u2019s recent \u201creset\u201d, specifically on cooperation over medicines and making it easier for touring musicians and other artists to travel around the continent.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not the only areas, but these are commonsense changes that we could make to our arrangements with the EU, which have, in my view, very little to do with the vote in 2016,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The prime minister also said that he had been \u201cquite uncomfortable\u201d about the Afghanistan superinjunction, which hid a major data breach and secret relocation scheme.<\/p>\n The prime minister called the scheme and the superinjunction a \u201cshocking inheritance\u201d from the previous government, even though his ministers extended the legal tool twice and lifted it only after a year in power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Keir Starmer has said he wants to reduce child poverty by the end of the parliament, as the prime minister comes under mounting pressure to end the two-child benefit cap. The prime minister told MPs on Monday it was his aim to cut the number of children living in poverty by the time of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[681,304,4668,1346,414,2295,1347,272],"class_list":{"0":"post-11652","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-child","9":"tag-cut","10":"tag-election","11":"tag-keir","12":"tag-mps","13":"tag-poverty","14":"tag-starmer","15":"tag-tells"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}