Keir Starmer told not to 'punish' children by keeping two-child cap
KEIR Starmer has been urged not to 'punish' children by keeping the two-child cap following Labour's partial U-turn on benefit cuts.
The UK Government had attempted to save around £5 billion a year by cutting welfare, mostly for those claiming disability and health benefits, but made concessions following a revolt from MPs.
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The move means the Treasury may not see any savings at all as the welfare budget is still set to rapidly rise in the coming years.
Media reports suggest the move could see ministers keep the cap in order to save money.
The Prime Minister previously indicated the Government would only abolish the two-child cap, which prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for more than two children, when it had the money to do so.
Asked in May whether he would scrap the policy, he said: 'We'll look at all options of driving down child poverty.'
The SNP, which will mitigate the limit in Scotland by 2026, has urged the UK Government to scrap the cap, which it says is pushing thousands of children into poverty.
The party said analysis from the House of Commons Library found that 2.3 million families could be lifted out of poverty if the UK Government matched Scottish Government policies.
These included the Scottish Child Payment, abolishing the two-child benefit cap and scrapping the so-called bedroom tax.
According to the House of Commons Library, these measures would lift 96,000 families in Scotland out of poverty.
The analysis also shows that over the past decade the number of children living in poverty in the UK has risen from 3.7 million (27%) in 2013/14 to 4.5 million (31%) in 2023/24.
That number is expected to rise to 4.6 million (33%) by 2029-30, according to the data.
SNP deputy Westminster leader Pete Wishart urged the Prime Minister to have a rethink on his welfare plans.
Pete Wishart MP (Image: PA) He said: 'Keir Starmer must not punish children for his disastrous mistakes over the Labour Party's cuts to disabled people.
'It is utterly shameful that as a direct result of Labour Party austerity cuts, child poverty is rising to record levels in the UK – and the Prime Minister is failing to lift a finger to tackle it.
'Scrapping the two-child benefit cap is the absolute bare minimum – and it should have been done on the Labour Government's first day in power.
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'It's pathetic that senior Labour Party figures now want to keep this punitive welfare cut just to show rebel MPs who's in charge.
'Saving Keir Starmer embarrassment is not more important than tackling child poverty.'
Wishart urged Starmer not to 'drag his feet' on the two-child cap and to instead match the SNP's Scottish Child Payment with a similar policy for the entire UK.
He added: 'Thanks to SNP action, Scotland is the only part of the UK where child poverty is falling.
'Unless Keir Starmer urgently follow's Scotland's lead, his lasting legacy will be pushing millions of children into destitution.'
A UK Government spokesperson said: 'We are determined to bring down child poverty. We've just announced a new £1 billion package to reform crisis support, including funding to ensure the poorest children do not go hungry outside of term time.
'This comes alongside the expansion to free breakfast clubs and the move to make over half-a-million more children eligible for free school meals.
'We have also increased the national minimum wage and are supporting 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a fair repayment rate on universal credit deductions.
'We will publish an ambitious child poverty strategy later this year to ensure we deliver fully funded measures that tackle the structural and root causes of child poverty across the country.'
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The Guardian
37 minutes ago
- The Guardian
7/7 London terror attack victims remembered at 20th anniversary service
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Spectator
39 minutes ago
- Spectator
What was missing from the 7/7 commemorations
Something was scarce, if not absent, in the commemorations of the 7/7 Islamist attacks yesterday, and that is the fact that these were Islamist attacks. The word did not appear in the Prime Minister's official statement to mark the anniversary. Keir Starmer commended 'the unity of Londoners in the face of terror', but what kind of terror? Far-right? Far-left? The IRA? Eco-warriors? The trouble is that if you specify the nature of the attacks, you specify the nature of the perpetrators. They were: Mohammad Sidique Khan (born in Leeds, parents from Pakistan); Shehzad Tanweer (born in Bradford, parents from Pakistan); Hasib Hussain (born in Leeds, parents from Pakistan); and Germaine Lindsay (born in Jamaica, family converted to Islam after settling in Yorkshire). That all were Muslims and all here as a result of immigration is purely coincidental and definitely not something we should learn any lessons from. To recognise Islamism as the cause of 7/7 is to say that four British Muslims blew up people who were supposed to be their fellow citizens, and did so in the name of 'protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters', as Khan put it in a video statement. That to Khan, Tanweer, Hussain, and Lindsay, and those who think like them, a Muslim's kinship and loyalty is with co-religionists the world over and not with the country that welcomed their families and extended them the benefits of citizenship. The obvious follow-up question is: how many Muslims in Britain feel the same way? In the wake of 7/7, 'Islamism' was never off the tongues of policymakers and pundits as the merits of various counter strategies were debated. Should ministers co-opt 'community leaders' to fashion a moderate British Islam that rejected extremism? Tried that. Should they root out extremist, foreign-born imams from UK mosques? Talked about it a lot but did very little. Should more money be directed to Prevent and anti-radicalisation outfits? That was popular for a while; what it achieved is anyone's guess. Twenty years on from 7/7, Islamism is no longer on quite so many tongues but it is no less of a threat. In 2010, Labour MP Stephen Timms was stabbed at his constituency surgery by Roshonara Choudhry, who was motivated by the Iraq war. In 2013, fusilier Lee Rigby was butchered in Woolwich by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale in 'retaliation for deaths in Muslim lands'. In March 2017, Khalid Masood murdered PC Keith Palmer and four others in an attack at Westminster. Two months later, Salman and Hashem Abedi killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. One month after that, Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba massacred eight people on London Bridge while shouting 'this is for Allah'. In 2019, Usman Khan killed two people on London Bridge after being released from prison for his role in a conspiracy to blow up the London Stock Exchange. In 2020, asylum seeker Khairi Saadallah, seeking refuge in the UK after fighting for the Ansar al-Sharia terror group in Libya, stabbed three people to death in a park in Reading. In 2021, Ali Harbi Ali murdered Sir David Amess over his vote for air strikes against the Islamic State and his membership of Conservative Friends of Israel. One in four UK Muslims say Palestine is the most important issue for them, compared to just 3 per cent of the overall population. Asked their views on Hamas, 29 per cent say 'positive' while 24 per cent say 'negative'. Fifty-seven per cent want halal food to be compulsory in schools and hospitals, 52 per cent want to make it illegal to show a picture of Mohammed, and one-third think it would be desirable to see sharia introduced in the UK. One in four British Muslims wants to outlaw homosexuality while one in five wants to legalise polygamy. Meanwhile, a Kurdish man, Hamit Coskun, was prosecuted for setting fire to his own copy of the Qur'an in public. A teacher in Batley is still in hiding four years after Muslim mobs descended on his school because a religious studies lesson featured a depiction of Mohammed. A mother had to plead for her autistic son down the local mosque in Wakefield after the boy dropped a copy of the Qur'an in school. A historical drama, The Lady of Heaven, was pulled from UK cinemas after mosques and mobs put pressure on exhibitors to stop showing a movie they deemed blasphemous. The government is consulting on a broad and sweeping definition of 'Islamophobia'. To bring all this up is divisive. Divisiveness is one of the great evils of liberal modernity because it reveals the presence of divisions, divisions that do not officially exist, whose acknowledgement is heretical in the civic religion of liberalism, not least because their growth tracks unhelpfully with Britain's embrace of multiculturalism, an infallible doctrine in the church of progress. The Prime Minister gives the game away in his statement when he says: 'Those who tried to divide us failed. We stood together then, and we stand together now – against hate and for the values that define us of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.' Every last word of that is wrong. Islamists do not want to divide us, they want to dominate us. Their goal isn't us at each others' throats, it's their boots on our throats. They want, they demand, and, if we allow them, they will enforce our submission. Progressives like Starmer have no frame for Islamism. As the DPP, he could understand it as a series of offences to be prosecuted, and as Prime Minister he recognises it as a national security threat, but he shows no indication of grasping its civilisational import. Islamism aims at the destruction of a civilisation, our civilisation. The closest frame that a secular liberal might understand is colonisation, but the western centre-left mind cannot conceive of a colonial project in which white westerners are the victims, and so the progressive retreats into comforting bromides about prejudice and standing together. To reduce Islamism to 'hate' is to mischaracterise the ideology. Yes, Islamists hate us for our way of life, as the deathless cliché goes, but it is a holy hate, the conviction of the dogmatist meets the zeal of the converter. Their mission is to conquer this land and all lands for a caliphate, where power is in the hands of the Muslims and all submission is to Allah. Islamists don't care that the Prime Minister won't utter their name. It matters not to them whether we look back in anger or look forward in denial. The Norm Macdonald joke ('What terrifies me is if Isis were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?') might be government policy in Britain but the backlash fixation does not extend beyond our elites, and certainly not to Islamists themselves. If innocent Muslims are mistreated because of their outrages, Islamists will exploit it to further their cause. If an attacked nation rallies around its Muslims, Islamists will find other ways to further their cause. You can try to anticipate and deny them every grievance but it will not change the original grievance, the one that drives them above all others, and that is the existence of peoples and nations which are not subject to Allah. That guarding against the victimisation of patriotic, law-abiding British Muslims will do nothing to dissuade Islamists from their murderous path is not a reason to lower our defences against bigotry. There is nothing that prevents a Muslim from being a good British citizen while living with devotion to Allah. We know that because Muslims do it every day. They raise families, start businesses, doctor to the sick, do charitable works, pray down the mosque, and do so with love for Britain, commitment to its customs and institutions, and sharing in its people's traditional orientation towards individual liberty, pluralism, fairness, and the rule of law. If the last 60 years of immigration had involved only these Muslims, Britain today would be a less multicultural but a far happier, safer, more prosperous country. 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You need to tell immigrants that they are lucky to be here, are expected to integrate fully, and that failure to do so will result in their removal. You need to tell their children and grandchildren that Britain owes them nothing but they owe it unending gratitude. The UK is nowhere near achieving these circumstances. If anything, it is less willing now than it was after 7/7 to confront the Islamist threat. We have an elite educated in civilisational shame and primed for performative oikophobia, a state that does not believe in itself and prefers to pander to internal foes, or avert its eyes from them entirely, rather than assert its legitimacy and exercise its power. Keir Starmer belongs to that elite, which explains his statement and the drift in which Britain finds itself. A nation that lacks the courage to name its enemies lacks the confidence to confront them and, in the end, it will lack the guts to overcome them.
BBC News
42 minutes ago
- BBC News
Derby councillor urged to quit over unpaid council tax
A Derby councillor is facing calls to stand down over a number of missed council tax payments.A Freedom of Information (FOI) request from the Derby Conservatives showed that Labour councillor Gulfraz Nawaz had a series of missed payments that resulted in a court summons in November City Council confirmed the Arboretum councillor was now clear of said: "I can confirm that my council tax is up to date and I do not owe anything to Derby City Council." The Local Democracy Reporting Service previously reported that Nawaz had failed to pay council tax in 2023.A councillor cannot vote for a council budget if they have an outstanding council tax debt of more than two months under government council said there were no arrears that would have prevented Nawaz from voting on budget or council tax matters throughout the period detailed in the FOI. The documents show two reminder notices for payment sent in July and September 2023, and a final notice in November followed by a summons later that month.A reminder notice was also issued in June and November 2024, followed by a final notice in reminder was sent in May of this documents also state that "council tax for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 financial years were cleared on 18 December 2023 and 18 February 2025 respectively". 'Lead by example' The leader of Derby Conservatives Steve Hassall urged Nawaz to "do the right thing and stand down". "This man is a serial non-payer of council tax," he said. "To miss once is a mistake anyone can make, to do it several times just paints a picture and that he thinks the rules do not apply to him."Derby Reform UK leader Tim Prosser echoed the comments."He should stand down if he is not prepared to respect the council. He is costing the council money and should be leading by example, as we are trying to encourage people to pay their council tax," he Labour leader of Derby City Council Nadine Peatfield said: "I find it disgraceful that both the opposition and press feel it's appropriate to shame someone over their financial situation, of which they know nothing about and is none of their business - especially when it has been confirmed that all payments are up to date."The Labour Party would not comment.
