In the run up to this week’s budget, much noise has been made about the political, electoral and economic arguments for abolishing the two-child benefit limit. Yet, for me, the compelling reason that the Chancellor should do so come Wednesday is the simplest of all: it is the right thing to do.
Between 1998 and 2003, during the first term of the last Labour Government, the number of children in poverty fell by 600,000 thanks to a comprehensive and concerted political effort, coupled with the moral certainty that it had to be done. Labour in power has lifted the children of this country out of poverty before and we can do it again. But we will not make a dent in it for as long as the two-child benefit limit is in place. This should be a non-negotiable for a Labour government.
When it comes to the effects of the current policy and the potential impact that lifting it would have, the figures are stark and undeniable. Abolishing the two-child benefit limit would lift 400,000 children above the poverty line altogether. 44% of children in families with 3 or more children are living in poverty, often as a direct result of the number of siblings they have. Longer term, the cost of ending the policy could be offset in a reduction in the societal costs associated with a quarter of a million children growing up in poverty; some estimates suggests the long-term saving could be almost twice as much as the immediate cost.
Less spoken about, but equally significant, is that an end to the two-child benefit limit would also mean an end to the injustice of the ‘rape clause,’ which waives the two-child limit if the third child is conceived as a result of non-consensual sex. Aside from the economics, there can be no moral or political justification for a policy that requires women to disclose and revisit their trauma in order to qualify financial support, nor can this be in the child’s best interests.
I do not believe that there is a single Labour MP who doesn’t believe that abolishing the two-child limit is the right thing to do morally, and so it is not for lack of political agreement that this government has prevaricated about this. We can blame economic uncertainty or fiscal constraints or the fact that the electorate is not unanimously in favour of scrapping the policy, but none of those factors change the moral imperative.
What is missing in this and, I think, in some of the wider challenges the Government has found itself facing this year is the moral courage to do something simply because they believe it is the right thing to do - without waiting for the economy or the polling to agree. That impetus to do things not just because they’re popular or they make economic sense but because we believe they are right. This isn’t to dismiss polling or the economic situation out of hand, but rather to recognise that we can choose to combine principles with pragmatism and let what is right be our primary influence. This is the missing ingredient in the Government’s mission to transform the nation and also its own fortunes, and represents a clarity I believe people would find attractive.
Many of our predecessors – the likes of Keir Hardie, RH Tawney and those whose legacy as Christian socialists I am privileged to carry on today as director of Christians on the Left – had a clear moral sense of what was right as the primary motivation. Their moral code was deeply engrained in their political ideology, whether it stemmed from religious faith or humanism, and they had the courage to act on it.
So, along with the majority of the Labour Party, I sincerely hope that this week sees the long overdue abolition of the two-child benefit limit. But I also hope that with it we rediscover a sense of moral courage at the heart of governing; that we might again dare to make decisions because we believe resolutely that they are right. We might be surprised by how much the electorate appreciate it.
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Hannah Rich is Director of Christians on the Left.
All blog posts represent the views of the author alone and not necessarily those of Mainstream.
