Starmer under pressure over two child cap

A row over a policy labelled a major driver of child poverty is shaping up to be Keir Starmer’s first big test of his tough approach to public spending, providing a first glimpse too of his ruthless approach towards handling Labour rebels.

Starmer is facing backlash over his decision to suspend seven leftwing backbenchers – John McDonnell, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain and Zarah Sultana – after they voted in favour of an SNP amendment to the King’s Speech, to end the two child benefit cap. A policy the PM has so far refused to commit to.

The cap, brought in under George Osborne in 2017, prevents parents from claiming Universal Credit or child tax credit for more than two children. According to the Resolution Foundation, the number of families affected by the policy has increased from 70,000 to 450,000 in the past six years.

Starmer’s first PMQs this afternoon was an unusually amicable affair, with much of the dialogue between him and Sunak rooted in agreement on foreign policy. Yet it was the questions posed by the SNP that Starmer seemed keener to dodge. Party leader Stephen Flynn reminded the PM that former Labour leader Gordon Brown had backed the abolition of the two child benefit cap. “So, prime minister, what’s changed?”, he asked. 

While avoiding answering the question, the SNP’s record on child poverty handed the PM an easy riposte.

“I would just say that before [Flynn] lectures everyone else, he should explain why, since the SNP came to power, there are 30,000 more children in poverty.”

That shut Flynn up. Though the question he posed – what has changed? – deserves answering.

The SNP leader needn’t have even gone as far back as Brown to reveal an apparent inconsistency in party policy. He could have asked the PM why he is punishing Labour rebels for supporting a policy that he himself campaigned in favour of as recently as 2020. Scrapping the cap was one of Starmer’s own leadership pledges. A cap that his deputy Angela Rayner has previously labelled “inhumane”.

This is also a rare policy area in which Suella Braverman, a poster girl of the Tory right, finds common ground with the likes of Corbynite, John McDonnell. “I believe that the cap is aggravating child poverty, and it is time for it to go,” said Braverman, who abstained from voting yesterday.

Yet, what has changed (for the worse), according to Starmer, is the state of Britain’s public finances.

Employing a rationale we can expect to hear a lot more of, Starmer has pinned the blame on past Tory mismanagement in order to justify his shift in stance. “Given the economic situation we’ve inherited”, the government cannot risk crashing the economy Liz Truss-style by making an unfunded promise to scrap the cap, his spokesperson reasoned today. The IFS estimates that removing the two-child benefit cap would cost the government £3.4bn a year.

This is not, however, the end of the matter.

While Labour whips sent a strong message to MPs last night that dissent will not be tolerated, there are many more Labour MPs opposed to the cap.

Earlier this week, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, said that removing the cap was among measures the government would look at as part of a review into child poverty.

Many of the 42 MPs who abstained from last night’s vote will be hoping to persuade the government in the coming months to scrap the cap as part of the Autumn budget. 

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