Tight-rope families blame the two-child benefit limit

A dad who lost £1,200 a month in child benefit when his blended family moved in together said they were “a disaster away from using food banks”.

Lewis Kirkbride is one of many low-income parents urging the government to scrap the two-child benefit cap introduced in 2015.

He and his partner have four children between them, meaning they lost their entitlement to single parent benefits and Universal Credit when they bought a house together.

Labor MP for Gateshead Central and Whickham Mark Ferguson said the new government had inherited a £22 billion “financial black hole” and they were unable to reverse the policy.

Mr Kirkbride and his partner both work full-time, but they are just getting by, he said.

“We are a blended family and we didn’t choose to have four children together,” he added.

He said he felt they were doing “everything we need to do” but their lives were becoming “harder and less safe”.

He added: “We’re one misfortune away – like a layoff or a car write-off – from having to seriously consider selling our house or using food banks.”

Cap for two children

All children can receive child benefit, which is available to all families, regardless of how many children they have.

Low-income families are entitled to more help in the form of Child Tax Credit and Universal Credit.

But in 2015, the previous Conservative government announced a new policy – ​​the two-child limit.

It means that families on low incomes can only claim additional support for the first two children.

There are exceptions for families with twins or adopted children, for example.

But the Resolution Foundation thinktank, which focuses on low-income families, said families capped at the two-child limit lose up to £3,500 a year in benefit support for their third child and each child thereafter.

Call for change

The North East Child Poverty Commission estimates that one in eight children in the region grows up in a household affected by the policy and that the two-child limit leaves families struggling in poverty.

Its director, Amanda Bailey, said: “What is clear is that the areas that are worst affected by the policy are the areas that have some of the worst rates of child poverty in the UK.”

Cedarwood Trust supports around 100 families a month in North Tyneside.

Wayne Dobson, the charity’s chief executive, said the policy was unfair and questioned why one child should be valued more than another.

He said: “Does this mean that those children (who do not receive benefits) do not eat properly for a week?

“This limit is just another one of those things that doesn’t make life any easier.”

According to new research published by children’s charity Barnados, a quarter of parents in the North East said they struggled to provide enough food for their children in the past 12 months.

They blamed the current cost of living situation, with the charity pointing to the two-child limit as one of the contributing causes.

“Not a Choice”

Anti-poverty campaigners are not alone in their criticism.

Natalie Collins, from Sunderland, is the CEO of Own My Life, which works with victims of domestic abuse.

She said the policy was “inhumane” and left some of society’s most vulnerable women in real danger.

“The two-child limit assumes that all women make active choices about how many children they have, which is particularly dangerous for women who have an abusive partner,” she said.

She said those women could be forced to have more children by their partner and find it harder to leave, knowing they won’t get benefits for all the children.

She added: “This policy does not take into account the reality of the most vulnerable in society.”

the black hole

Shortly after coming to power in July, almost all Labor MPs voted against a motion to scrap the policy.

The party insisted it would be too much of a financial risk.

Ferguson, a Labor MP, said: “We were elected on a platform of stable, sensible and careful management of the economy.

“That means we can’t always do everything we’d like to do.”

The new government has said it is committed to a national child poverty strategy that will be “bold and ambitious” and will work across government departments.

But Labor is under increasing pressure – including from some of its own members – to ditch the two-child benefit cap.

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