“I refuse to accept child poverty is a normal part of our society”: Apsana Begum MP on voting to scrap the cap

The last fourteen years of austerity have been brutal, and people are desperate for change – for material change. The new Labour Government’s programme – of investment, public ownership, and employment rights – is an opportunity to transform the UK for the better.

That is why this week I voted in Parliament to scrap the Tories’ two-child limit policy once and for all. I voted with a sense of hope now that the Tories’ reign of injustice and repression has come to an end. Because it is a disgrace that successive Conservative Governments have paid for its tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy by targeting children, among others, for cuts in benefits and services.

By ripping up the safety nets for our communities and cutting funding for services – while delivering expensive tax cuts for the affluent – they have demonstrated their choice to force children to bear the brunt of economic woes they did nothing to create.

As such, the growing number of children whose parents struggle to afford to feed them, clothe them or house them, is a shameful indictment on our society. The UK has the sixth largest economy in the world and yet child poverty is rising on every official measure. 

More than four million children now live in relative poverty – that is almost one in three children living in households with incomes of less than 60% of the median. My constituency in East London has suffered from disproportionately high levels of child poverty and deprivation for a long time. In fact, we have some of the highest rates of child poverty in the entire country.

Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) released data in June 2024 which shows that almost half of all children in Tower Hamlets are in poverty. All this while the rich have got richer, and the wealth of UK billionaires has grown. Yet this is not inevitable. It is a question of priorities and choices.

The Tories’ prioritisation of corporate profits and the wealthy over lifting children out of destitution is unforgivable. Not only were people forced into poverty, they then punished them for being poor. One of the key drivers of rising child poverty is the two-child benefit limit and scrapping it will immediately lift 300,000 children out of poverty.

It is a move backed by trade unions, including the eleven trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party. The End Child Poverty Coalition, who have been calling for the two-child limit to be abolished, includes over 100 organisations (including Save the Children, Barnardos, Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), The Children’s Society and Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health).

Think tanks such as the Resolution Foundation and Women’s Budget Group have argued that abolishing the two-child limit would be one of the most efficient ways to drive down child poverty rates.

The evidence is widespread, extensive, clear, and unequivocal.

That is why it is heartbreaking and shocking that my attempt to enhance the King’s Speech, by adding a commitment to removing the two-child limit policy, resulted in my Party removing the Whip from me. But it is also why, ultimately, child poverty is a matter of conscience for me.

I know that my constituents voted for change and are looking to this Government – this Labour Government – to deliver and end the injustice that blights our lives.

The unprecedented and aggressive response regarding those of us who voted to scrap the two-child limit does send alarm bells as to what this means for the widely welcomed Government commitment to abolish child poverty. But I am still hopeful that the two-child benefit limit will be reversed.

Because I refuse to accept child poverty is a normal part of our society — and that there is nothing that can be done about it. This is not why I went into politics, and it is not what my constituents elected me to do.

Apsana Begum is the MP for Poplar and Limehouse.

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