EXCLUSIVE: Bridget Phillipson: ‘As Deputy Leader, I will make fighting child poverty my main priority – everything is on the table including removing the two-child limit’

Throughout the race to be Labour’s Deputy Leader, LabourList will be publishing a range of pieces from supporters of both candidates as well as offering a platform to both Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell to share their pitch to Labour members.

Tackling child poverty has always been the historic mission of the Labour Party, but it is also one that is profoundly personal to me.

I know only too well the sting of growing up in poverty. My mother brought me up alone. We didn’t have much – there was no heating upstairs and we regularly struggled with damp. We sometimes relied on the kindness of our community to get by. One neighbour, seeing me playing outside in only a jumper one winter, pushed an envelope through our letterbox marked, “For Bridget’s Coat”.

READ MORE: ‘Labour’s Deputy Leader should articulate our future – by learning from our past’

Lifting more children out of poverty is why I came into politics. It’s why I’ve spent the past year as Education Secretary working to bear down on the child poverty that blights children’s life chances.

Bringing back Sure Start for a new generation, securing free school meals for more than half a million more children, free breakfast clubs and school based nurseries have been a vital down payment on dealing with the problem. But I know that it is not enough.

As the Co-Chair of the Child Poverty Taskforce, I’m thinking every day about how to turn the tide on child poverty. Everything is on the table, including removing the two-child limit.

And while I’m proud of the progress I’ve fought for, the good Labour policies I’ve delivered, I want the mandate to go further. The mandate, as deputy leader, to make tackling child poverty the unbreakable moral mission of this Labour government.

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We should never forget that it was the Conservatives who introduced the two-child cap, a spiteful attack on children who were punished and pushed into hardship, through no fault of their own.

I have said time and again that a Labour government would never have implemented it.

My top priority will be for this Labour Government to consider how we can rapidly lift children out of poverty. That means all options remain in play including removing the two-child limit.  And as Deputy Leader – with a seat in Cabinet and a mandate from members – improving the life chances of children is what I will be fighting for day in, day out.

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Because be in no doubt: we won’t achieve our party’s historic mission by shouting from the side lines. It won’t happen unless there is someone driving that mission forward in government, with the clout – and the mandate – to make it happen.

Together, under my Deputy Leadership we can bring our party together and shape positively what happens in the run up to the next election. Now is the time to unite, so we can deliver change and beat Reform.

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