Rayner on two-child limit: Labour has to “prioritise” because of state of economy

Angela Rayner has argued that a future Labour government will have to “prioritise” because of funding constraints caused by the Tories having “crashed the economy” but stressed that that would not mean that people “wouldn’t see the difference”.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, the deputy Labour leader rejected suggestions that she has ‘lost her nerve’ on issues including the two-child limit on benefits, after Keir Starmer was widely criticised last month for saying Labour plans to retain the Tory policy.

Rayner previously described the policy as “obscene and inhumane”. Asked today whether she has lost her nerve, she said: “Not at all, no. And I’ll give you an example of where we’ve prioritised. So what we’ve said is that we have to prioritise because we won’t have the money because the Tories crashed the economy.”

She continued: “In direct challenge to what you’ve said there, our priority was to give free breakfast clubs and to use the ending of the non-dom status, the tax loophole, to fund breakfast clubs, because a kid like me who was on free school meals, lunchtime was the first time I got to eat in a day.

“So we know that breakfast would have the biggest impact for children going into school and we know that would be the better way of spending that money. So it’s about a priority as opposed to us saying that we agree with what the Tories did.

“We just know that the Tories have crashed the economy and we’re not going to have the funding, certainly in the first period, to do everything that the Labour government will want to do. That doesn’t mean to say, however, that we wouldn’t do things differently and people wouldn’t see the difference.”

Starmer was strongly criticised after he told the BBC last month that Labour is “not changing” the two-child limit policy – with Labour MPs from across the party’s spectrum speaking out against the move.

Asked on Tuesday whether Labour would scrap the associated rape clause – which requires women to disclose their child was conceived as a result of rape to get around the limit – Starmer said: “There’s nothing to say an incoming Labour government can’t make sure that the policies we’ve got can operate more fairly.

“I think you’d expect that from a Labour government and you’ll get that from a Labour government.”

He added: “What we’re being absolutely clear about is an anti-poverty strategy driven by an incoming Labour government will focus on growing the economy and making sure we get that growth in every part of the country.”

A new campaign group, the Labour Campaign to End Child Poverty, was launched last week to urge the Labour leadership to commit to repealing the two-child limit immediately on entering government.

It is also calling on the party to commit in its next manifesto to axe other coalition-era social security measures that “deepen child poverty” and to expand its plans for free school breakfast clubs for primary school pupils to secondary schools.