Child benefit cap must be scrapped at King’s Speech, SNP tells Labour

The SNP will urge the Government to abolish the two-child benefit cap if it does not move to do so itself, Stephen Flynn has said.

Flynn has written to Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, urging him to instruct his party’s MPs in Scotland to support the SNP move.

The cap, introduced by the Conservatives in 2017, prevents parents claiming Universal Credit or child tax credits for a third child, except in very limited circumstances.

The SNP Westminster leader will table an amendment to the King’s Speech, which will be made on Wednesday setting out the Government’s legislative agenda.

MPs then have the opportunity to debate the contents of the speech in the following days, at which point they can lay amendments to it.

Power over which amendments are selected is in the gift of the House of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle.

In his party’s first major intervention since the General Election, Flynn said the two child cap is “pushing thousands of Scottish children into poverty” and ending it is “the bare minimum” required of the new Government.

His letter to the Scottish Labour leader claimed the “Tory two child cap became the Labour Party two child cap” once Sir Keir Starmer stepped through the door of Downing Street.

In the letter, Flynn said it would be “simple” for the Government to scrap the cap “immediately” but added this was “a political choice and it requires politicians, across parties, to demand better”.

Appealing to Sarwar, the SNP Westminster leader wrote that he was “willing to work together for the betterment of the people of Scotland”, and claimed the cap was a good place for this work to begin.

The General Election saw the SNP’s numbers at Westminster reduced to nine MPs, as Labour swept up many of its central belt seats in its landslide victory.

Speaking ahead of the King’s Speech, Flynn said: “The two child cap is pushing thousands of Scottish children into poverty – and scrapping it is the bare minimum the Labour Party Government must do if it is serious about tackling poverty.

“I urge Keir Starmer to include it in his programme for Government this week but, if he fails, the SNP will lay an amendment to abolish it immediately. It is shameful and it must go now.”

He urged Sir Keir’s Government to also “take further bold action to eradicate child poverty” including matching Holyrood’s Scottish child payment across the UK by raising the child element of Universal Credit by £26.70 per child, per week.

Figures published last week by the Department for Work and Pensions showed there were 1.6 million children living in households affected by the cap as of April this year, up from 1.5 million to April 2023.

Of these, 52% of children were in households with three children, 29% in households with four children, and 19% in households with five or more children.

Last month, before becoming Prime Minister, Sir Keir said he would scrap the two-child limit “in an ideal world” but added that “we haven’t got the resources to do it at the moment”.

The Resolution Foundation has said that abolishing the two-child limit would cost the Government somewhere between £2.5 billion and £3.6 billion in 2024/25, but that such costs are “low compared to the harm that the policy causes”.