New Labour MPs To Face Immediate Pressure Over Two-Child Cap

Newly elected Labour MPs are set to come under immediate pressure from the party’s left to defy the leadership by backing moves to scrap the two-child benefit cap ahead of the King’s Speech.

Momentum, the organisation founded to champion Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership bid in 2015, will on Thursday launch a lobbying tool aimed at persuading Labour MPs to support the push against the cap.

Thousands of the group’s members and supporters will be provided with a pre-written email to send to their Labour MP, or to Prime Minister Keir Starmer if they are based in a non-Labour seat, about the “no child left behind” campaign.

“For a lot of the MPs it’ll be the first time they’ve ever been put under pressure to support an issue in Parliament,” a source involved in the campaign said. “This is an opportunity for them to demonstrate whether they are serious about addressing child poverty.”

The two-child benefit cap, which in most households restricts the receipt of benefits to a family’s first two children, was introduced in 2017 by then-Tory chancellor George Osborne. The Child Poverty Action Group has said that scrapping it would lift 250,000 children out of poverty. 

Government figures published on Thursday said over 1.5m children in 440,000 households, or around one in nine children, were affected by the cap last year. Charity Save The Children said the figures were an "outrage" and called for the cap to be "scrapped immediately to prevent families from facing hardship and destitution".

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell has announced plans to table amendments to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ first Budget, expected to take place in the autumn, that would see the cap ditched. He has urged the Government to change its position before then.

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