‘Labour must make the political choice to prioritise fighting child poverty’

Elections are often won and lost in the final months of a parliament. While the Tories are lagging behind on key polling indicators, we must not underestimate the Conservative party’s will to win, its record over the last century, and the powerful forces which lie behind it.

It’s right then that Labour should be reviewing every single aspect of its approach as we move closer to the likely election date – still more than a year away. But this review should not be reduced to a series of announcements from on high, jettisoning one promise after another.

At least, not without debate. The Guardian, of all places, recently has begun to publish commentary questioning the leadership’s approach. John McTernan, hardly a man of the left, used the paper to say that we are entering a “change” election. But change, he says, has to be for something, not simply away from a failing status quo. In order to win, he goes on, progressive parties need to “own the future, and fairness”.

Yet many of the leadership’s recent announcements have been to abandon proposals which offer progress and hope. Take child poverty.

The Tories are taking us back to the 19th century

The Tories are taking children back to the 19th century. There are 4.2 million children in poverty. Incredibly there are many communities today where more than half the children live in poverty. Even before Covid hit, a UN official stated that the UK’s social safety net has been “deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos”.

This is the background for the recent Labour leadership announcement that we may not be able to afford to end the two-child welfare benefit cap when we get into office. The real question ought to be: how can we afford not to?

My constituency of Hemsworth in West Yorkshire has seen child poverty increase by over 30 per cent since 2015 alone. On the other hand, in Rishi Sunak’s North Yorkshire constituency, there were just over 100 more children in poverty since 2015. How can it be that a child has a better chance of getting on in life just by virtue of them being born a few miles up the road? 

The majority of the 3,800 children living in poverty in Hemsworth have at least one parent who is working.

The last Labour government took child poverty seriously

The Labour Party was created precisely to tackle these issues. Look at the record of the last Labour government. Labour launched an idea with a deceptively simple slogan: every child matters. No family ought to be left behind. It is universalistic in character, progressive, and it offers hope.

Under Gordon Brown’s Chancellorship, Labour inherited 3.4 million children in poverty, and took a million out of poverty. We also created Sure Start centres in almost all poorer communities in Britain and began the process of refinancing education.

Of course, more could have been done. That is always true. I wanted a more radical government. But it shows what can be done. Of course, the Tories scrapped all of this. But now Labour is hesitating about the two-child cap on the grounds of cost.

This Labour Party must tackle child poverty too

The Labour Campaign to End Child Poverty launched recently is a very welcome initiative. It rightly calls not just for Labour to commit to scrapping the two-child limit “as a first step”, but to go much further in tackling what are obscenely high levels of child poverty in this country.

This would include repealing the benefit cap, the bedroom tax and sanctions and payments deducted at source from Universal Credit.

My own EDM calling for the end of the cruel and unnecessary two-child cap has been signed by 30 MPs before recess began. I commissioned the authoritative House of Commons Library to give us a clear indication of the likely cost of scrapping the limit.

The government says the cost is £5 billion. But it simply isn’t true. It turns out that we could, and we should, lift 270,000 households out of poverty at a cost of just £1.4 billion.

But only a government prepared to implement policies to tackle these appalling inequalities and social injustice can achieve that. 

The research I commissioned shows that a relatively small increase in social security spending would have a huge impact on the life chances of hundreds of thousands of deprived families. 

Not spending to fight child poverty is a political choice

It’s a cost that pales in comparison to the money the Tories wasted on dodgy Covid contracts for their mates and failed tax cuts for the super-rich. Unite the Union for example pointed out that in one quite small part of the UK economy, the largest North Sea oil producers made a combined profit of £41.4 billion in 2021, up by 50% from 2019. It’s absolutely affordable and would put money back in people’s pockets which in turn boosts local economies. 

This is surely a sensible approach for a progressive government to take?

Of course, the Tories have made a political choice to cut funding to our poorest children. But Labour’s leadership can and must stop equivocating about this issue. 

Every child deserves an equal chance to get on in life. But this is denied to millions of children all across our country. Labour can show it is serious about breaking down barriers to opportunity by pledging to end the two-child benefit limit and the benefits cap. 

Owning the future, offering hope to the poor, tackling our country’s pressing problems, an assault on inequality, rebuilding our economy. These are the central precepts which Labour needs to offer to the country. Not simply to win the election but then to go on and transform a system which is profoundly broken.