Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting has praised the Archbishop of Canterbury for calling on Labour to scrap the two-child benefit cap – a policy which charities and think tanks say has pushed hundreds of thousands of children into poverty. However, Streeting then refused to commit to scrapping the policy when next in government.

Keir Starmer said he would scrap the policy when he was running for the Labour leadership but has since U-turned, citing tough public finances.

A quarter of Britain’s children live below the poverty line. Around 11% of teenagers say they are missing at least one meal a week, compared with 2.6% in much poorer Portugal. Obviously this impacts on their education and other aspects of their potential. New research has found that four in ten teachers say their students were showing up to class too hungry to learn, which rose to 63% in the poorest areas.

Currently child poverty levels in the UK are the worst among the world’s richest nations. “Child poverty is a political choice,” tweeted Ian Byrne MP.

A Momentum spokesperson agreed: “The Labour leadership is actively choosing child poverty. Wes Streeting is totally wrong to claim that scrapping the Tories’ cruel and damaging two-child benefit cap is unaffordable. It could easily be funded through straightforward, popular wealth taxes. But Streeting and Starmer prefer to prioritise the interests of corporate donors over hungry kids. Once again, the Labour Leadership is out of touch with the party’s values and failing to offer a real alternative to Tory disaster.”

Scrapping the two-child benefit cap would cost £1.3bn a year. Ending inheritance tax loopholes that benefit the already wealthy could raise up to £1.4 billion a year.  Equalising capital gains with income tax rates could raise up to £15bn a year.

But Labour’s front bench has ruled out multiple redistributive taxes including a wealth tax, an increase in capital gains tax or a higher top rate of income tax. As Luke Hildyard, author of Enough: Why It’s Time to Abolish the Super-Rich (Pluto, 2024), pointed out on Labour Hub recently: “This is quite at odds with the way that living standards have improved throughout much of history.”

It’s estimated the government could raise up to £50 billion by reforming the way it taxes wealth, according to research from Tax Justice UK and Patriotic Millionaires UK. ​They point to a growing consensus that higher taxation of wealth could help solve current  economic crises – from low productivity growth to crumbling public services and wage  stagnation.

​​The Institute for Public Policy Research, the International Monetary Fund, the Resolution Foundation, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and even the  Conservative-aligned think tank Bright Blue have all called for higher taxes on wealth. Recent polling from YouGov found that 78% of voters  support an annual wealth tax on those with assets worth over £10 million, including 77%  of Conservative voters and 86% of Labour voters.

Pressure is mounting on the Labour front bench with Gordon Brown last week joining the call for the two-child policy to be scrapped. Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP tweeted: “Labour will inevitably have to concede on scrapping the two- child cap, lifting 250,000 children out of poverty, so it is best done sooner than later.” Former Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott MP agreed, saying the policy was “easily affordable.”

Labour’s former Executive Director of Policy and Research Andrew Fisher also called for Labour to commit to scrapping the cap, citing a new Opinium poll that shows nearly 40% of the public claiming it would make them more likely to vote for whichever party made the pledge.

Responding to Wes Streeting’s claim that “we will have a serious cross-government strategy to not just reducing child poverty, but to ending child poverty,” he asked: “If you can’t lift 300,000 out of poverty, how will you end poverty for 4.3m?”

And on the subject of recent surveys, new polling for 38 Degrees found that nearly  seven out of ten voters couldn’t name a single Labour Party policy that would them get through the cost-of-living crisis. Given that an estimated 1.4 million people who voted Labour in 2017 did not vote in 2019 and need to be inspired to vote Labour in 2024, that should be deeply concerning to Party strategists.

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Don’t forget the Conference this Saturday: THIS EVENT HAS NOW BEEEN POSTPONED

Image: Archbishop of Canterbury. https://www.flickr.com/photos/catholicism/8447766900. Creator: MARCIN MAZUR CCN  Copyright: MARCIN MAZUR Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED AttribuAtion-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic