Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves (Image: Getty)
Sir Keir Starmer is now almost certain to shelve plans to scrap the two-child benefit cap with no money left after Labour’s ￡5 billion retreat on welfare. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson admitted on Sunday that the U-turn will make it harder to pay for other policies such as potentially scrapping the two-child benefit limit.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, she said: “The decisions that have been taken in the last week do make future decisions harder. But, all of that said, we will look at this collectively in terms of all of the ways that we can lift children out of poverty.” She added: “The mission that we’re driving across government is about making sure that background doesn’t determine success, because for far too many children in our country, the family that they’re born into, the town that they’re born into, will absolutely determine their life chances.”
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Asked the same question on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Phillipson said: “The changes in the last week, of course, have come at a cost, and we have been upfront about that.”
Ms Phillipson said she had heard the views of the many Labour backbenchers and child poverty charities who wanted the two-child benefit cap removed.
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The cap, which limits parents to claiming many means-tested benefits to their first two children, apart from in very limited circumstances, was introduced under the Conservatives.
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Experts said scrapping it would be the single most effective way of reducing child poverty.
But a No 10 source suggested scrapping it was now off the table. They said: "My assessment is that is now dead in the water."
Meanwhile the Tories have demanded that foreigners are banned from claiming key disability benefits in the wake of Labour's humiliating U-turn on welfare reforms.
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Conservative shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride said the party is calling for a discussion paper on whether foreign nationals should be receiving sickness benefits.
Asked on Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips whether it is right that they are going to propose that foreign nationals should be excluded from access to sickness benefits, he said: “So we’ve tabled an amendment to the welfare Bill that’s going through Parliament at the moment, saying that we think the Government should come through with a discussion paper on that issue and addressing this question as to whether foreign nationals should be receiving those kind of benefits.
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“We know that, for example, over the last three years, the number of foreign nationals claiming these benefits has doubled. And we know that if you take those households with at least one foreign national within the household, the welfare Bill is about a billion pounds per month. So the numbers are very high.
“We would, of course, be excluding not just those that are British citizens, but those that have rights under international treaties to settle in the United Kingdom.”
Put to him that huge numbers of people who work in the NHS are foreign nationals and asked why they would be punished, Sir Mel said there are “already particular arrangements around foreign nationals and their access to benefits” and they are calling for a discussion document “so there are lots of questions that we need to consider”.