THE Archbishop of Canterbury has urged the Government and the leader of the Opposition to remove the “cruel” two child-limit on profit payments to families.
The limit — the topic of sustained opposition by the C of E’s bishops because it was first proposed in 2015 — “falls wanting our values as a society,” Archbishop Welby told The Observer on Sunday. “It denies the reality that every one children are of equal and immeasurable value, and may have an impact on their long-term health, wellbeing and academic outcomes.”
He said: “This cruel policy is neither moral nor essential. We are a rustic that may and may provide for those most in need, following the instance of Jesus Christ, who served the poorest in society. As a meaningful step towards ending poverty, and recognising the growing concern across the political spectrum, I urge all parties to commit to abolishing the two-child limit.”
The two-child limit was introduced in April 2017. From this point, low-income families who had a 3rd or subsequent child lost their entitlement to additional support through child tax credit and Universal Credit, then value £2780 per child per yr. A complete of 264,820 children were affected in the primary yr, rising to 1.5 million children in 2023, reminiscent of one in ten of all children.
It was first proposed in 2015, as a part of a package of welfare reforms designed to avoid wasting £13 billion a yr by 2020-21. Included within the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, it was branded “fundamentally anti-family” by C of E Bishops (News, 13 November; 20 November 2015). The Government argued that families in receipt of means-tested advantages “should face the identical financial decisions about having children as those supporting themselves solely through work”. The limit was forecast to avoid wasting the Government £5 billion a yr in the long term. Child profit is just not affected.
A yr after its introduction, 60 Bishops signed a letter setting out their opposition to the policy (News, 13 April 2018) and in subsequent years, they’ve continued to call for its abolition, bolstered by reports analysing its effect produced by the Church’s Mission and Public Affairs Council, which has warned of its “devastating effect” on families (News, 28 June 2019).
Until his retirement last yr, the campaign was led by the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Paul Butler, who in 2022 tabled a Private Members Bill calling for abolition of the limit (News, 15 July 2022).
Writing in The Observer this weekend, the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, who succeeds Bishop Butler because the Church’s spokesman on child poverty within the House of Lords, referred to parliamentary questions he had tabled to determine whether the Government was evaluating the consequences of the policy:
“Before passing the policy, the Government suggested the two-child limit would help move parents into employment and supply incentives to have fewer children. But after I asked if it had succeeded, I used to be told it ‘is just not possible to provide a strong assessment of the impact of the two-child limit’, and the Government has ‘no such plans to gather data to guage the success of the two-child profit cap’.”
He wrote: “This is a policy which, if the Government, and indeed the Labour Party, which has avoided committing to reversing it, dared (or cared) to look, is as short-sighted because it is unfair. Ending it, and so immediately lifting half-a-million children above the breadline, needs to be a priority for any party wanting to be recognised for its reasonableness in addition to its compassion within the upcoming election.”
A report last yr by researchers on the University of York, Oxford University, LSE, and the Child Action Poverty Group (Needs and entitlements welfare reform and bigger families) concluded: “Our quantitative evaluation found that the two-child limit has had only a really small effect on fertility, meaning its fundamental effect is to push families with three or more children further into poverty.” The policy was causing “extreme hardship to affected families”, it warned, arguing that the continued rise in relative poverty had been driven almost entirely by rising poverty amongst households with three or more children.”
The report said that, of the families interviewed, many didn’t know that the two-child limit existed until after their child was born. In some case, “conception was not a selection, but was the results of failed contraception or an abusive relationship,” the researchers wrote. “In other cases, the family was not receiving advantages when the affected child was born, and fogeys only came upon in regards to the restriction when their circumstances later modified because of this of relationship breakdown or job loss.”
The Resolution Foundation has calculated that, “under a totally rolled out two-child limit, we estimate 590,000 more children can be in relative poverty than if the two-child limit didn’t exist.” Around a 3rd of households with three or more children were in relative poverty in 2012/13. The foundation estimates that this can rise to half by 2028/29.
In 2019 the Work and Pensions Committee really useful that the two-child limit be abandoned. In its submission, the Church of England Mission & Public Affairs Council highlighted the “disproportionate impact on Muslim and Jewish communities and other families which have a spiritual or moral objection to contraception or abortion”.
The Government has pointed to a fall in absolute poverty, noting that in 2021/22 there have been 400,000 fewer children living in absolute poverty after housing costs than in 2009/10. A YouGov poll last July found that 60 per cent of those polled were in favour of retaining the limit; 22 per cent said it needs to be abolished.
Last yr, the leader of the Labour party, Sir Keir Starmer, said that it will not abandon the policy should the party win the subsequent General Election, prompting criticism from Christians on the Left (News, 21 July 2023; Comment, 18 August 2023).
The Resolution Foundation has estimated that abolishing the limit would cost £2.5 billion in 2024/25, rising to £3.6 billion the next yr, were the policy in effect for all families on Universal Credit with three or more children.
Asked on Sky News on Sunday in regards to the Archbishop’s comments, the Shadow Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, a practising Anglican, said that he welcomed them. “You’re never going to seek out, if there’s a Labour Government, politicians being sent out to attack the Archbishop of Canterbury for virtue-signalling, as Conservative MPs have done. It is literally his job. He’s the one person within the country whose job it’s to signal virtue.
“And if the mission of the Church is just not to alleviate poverty and suffering, then I don’t know what’s.”
He said: “I take him really seriously, and if we’re fortunate enough to be in government after the subsequent General Election, we may have a serious cross-government strategy for not only reducing child poverty but ending child poverty.”
