Keir Starmer Says There Is No "Silver Bullet" To Address Child Poverty

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said there is no quick-fix or "silver bullet" to addressing child poverty as he comes under increasing pressure to lift the two-child benefit cap.

Starmer spoke on Monday at the Farnborough Air Show as he launched a new skills programme set up by the Government. At the event he was pressed by journalists as to whether the Government was considering removing it: backbench Labour MPs have pressured the Prime Minister to make a clear commitment for months.  

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson told Sky Newson Monday morning the Government was considering removing the measure to alleviate child poverty. Her statement was the clearest indication the Government would do so to date.  

Phillipson, however, said it would be "very expensive" and the Government would need to "consider it as one of a number of levers in terms of how we make sure we lift children out of poverty.”

When asked on Monday morning later that day, Starmer said there was no "silver bullet" to ending child poverty. 

"There is no silver bullet. If there was a silver bullet it would have been shot a very long time ago. It is a complicated set of factors that I know and I can see every day in my own constituency to do with pay, to do with benefits, to do with work, to do with housing, to do with education, to do with health," he said. 

”That is why you need a strategy to deal with it which is why we have set up a very strongly chaired body to drive forward that work. 

”So I am not surprised we are having a debate about it... What matters is that we turn that into action and reduce child poverty which is what I am determined that we will do.” 

At the conference Starmer also officially launched a new body which would address the United