What You Need To Know About Labour’s New Child Poverty Strategy

Child poverty has been a sticking point for Labour, especially after the government chose to extend the Tory policy of introducing the two-child benefit cap last July.

Considering there are 4.5 million children living in poverty in the UK, this was a highly controversial move.

The government insisted it did not have enough money to lift the cap but, as HuffPost UK reported, even initiatives like baby banks meant to help infants are expected to struggle this winter.

Labour has now since decided to make addressing child poverty a priority and attempt to lift half a million children out of hardship by the end of this parliament.

Here’s what you need to know.

The two-child benefit cap will be scrapped from April, as chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in her Budget last week.

This will cost an estimated £3 billion, and is meant to lift 450,000 children out of poverty by 2030.

Labour will also provide upfront childcare support for parents on universal credit going back to work.

More funding and initiatives are being introduced to make childcare more accessible, too, which is meant to help parents on universal credit who are returning to work.

There will also be a new legal duty on councils to notify schools, health visitors and GPs when a child is placed in temporary accommodation.

New reforms will hopefully make baby formula more affordable as well, while an extra £8 billion will being supplied to help end families’ long-term stays in B&Bs.

Labour also pointed to a series of other measures it recently announced meant to help struggling families.

It has promised to cut £150 from energy bills, and previously put in a £950m boost to a local authority housing fund.

According to the government, this will all mean 550,000 children are lifted out of poverty by 2030 – allegedly the biggest reduction in a single parliament since records began.

PM Keir Starmer said: “Too many children are growing up in poverty, held back from getting on in life, and too many families are struggling without the basics: a secure home, warm meals and the support they need to make ends meet.

“I will not stand by and watch that happen, because the cost of doing nothing is too high for children, for families and for Britain.”

The Resolution Foundation estimated the measures in the plan will lift 505,000 children out of poverty – 45,000 short of the government’s expected total.

According to the think tank, the strategy will see child poverty rates fall by 1%, down from 32% in 2023 to 31% in 2029-30.

The think tank claimed that is equivalent to 300.000 fewer children growing up in poverty as a result.

The think tank’s research director, Lindsay Judge, said: “The government deserves credit for beginning to turn the tide on child poverty, and getting rates falling for the first time in nine years.

“We have long called for the abolition of the two-child limit, which unfairly penalises larger families, the vast majority of whom are in work, have very young children or disabilities in the family.

“Repealing it is the right decision, and the government should be praised for doing so despite fiscal constraints.”

Charities had been hoping there would be a 10-year strategy unveiled today, with the Strategic Director for External Affairs at the National Children’s Bureau telling Sky News there was a lack of “real ambition”.

Phillip Anderson said: “It was supposed to be a 10-year strategy, we wanted to see real ambition and ideally legally binding targets for reducing poverty.

“The government itself says there will still be around four million children living in poverty after these measures and the strategy has very little to say to them.”

Similarly, the Resolution Foundation said other government measures run counter to plans to lift children out of hardship.

Judge said: “Other child poverty headwinds remain, not least the continued freeze in Local Housing Allowance, which risks further squeezing the living standards of poorer families living in the private rented sector.”

Founder of the Big Issue, crossbench peer Lord Bird, also told Times Radio the government is just kicking the can down the road with this decision.

“I’ve seen so many pilots, so many pilots come and go, not one of them have gone mainstream. So I’m a bit cheesed off with what seems to me to be another attempt at kind of rallying emergency stopgap, you know, kind of band-aid results,” he said.

Bird added: “We’ve got so much money invested in the welfare, in welfare, and that is keeping people, you know, slightly comfortable in poverty, then we really got to find where are we going to get the money to actually dismantle poverty, help children’s family, help their parents get out of poverty.”

Tory chairman Kevin Hollirake hit out at the strategy too, saying the best way to lift children out of poverty was to make sure there’s access to well-paid work.

But he warned there is a “toxic mix” of rising unemployment and additional pressures on business right now, affecting the jobs market.