Latest news with #twochildcap
The Guardian
6 days ago
- The Guardian
Women who conceived in abusive relationships lose legal challenge over benefits ‘rape clause'
Two women who conceived their eldest children while they were in violent and controlling relationships have lost a legal challenge to the rules around the two-child benefit cap. A high court judge said the accounts of the abuse the women faced when they were 'vulnerable girls barely out of childhood' were 'chilling'. But in a judgment delivered on Friday, Justice Collins Rice said it was for politicians to settle the matter, not the courts. The women, and campaigners who support them, said they were disappointed but would fight on to have universal credit rules changed. The two mothers, identified only as LMN and EFG, launched a challenge to the rules around the so-called rape clause in universal credit claims at a court in Leeds in June. The two-child cap for universal credit claims has exceptions to cover a limited number of circumstances, including if a child is conceived nonconsensually. But the court heard how this only applies to third or subsequent children, leaving some women unable to utilise this exception if, for example, their first two children are conceived after rape but they have further children in consensual relationships. The women, whose claim was against the Department for Work and Pensions. were supported by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), which describes the benefit rules as 'inhumane'. The judge said the two women endured abusive relationships that included rape. 'They are chilling accounts of appalling domestic abuse,' she said. 'Vulnerable girls barely out of childhood themselves caught in toxic relationships, or repeating cycles of such relationships, in which their personal, reproductive and family autonomy is acutely compromised by the physical, sexual and emotional violence of controlling perpetrators.' She said the women were 'among the most harmed and vulnerable' members of society while as mothers they were 'making an important and valuable' contribution to it. The judge said CPAG had brought a legal challenge to the two-child cap before. 'That made its way to the supreme court, which, in 2021, firmly returned the matter to the political realm.' She said she had reached the same place as the supreme court did before, saying it was 'a policy question dealing in social, economic, moral and ethical subject matter' and a 'political law-reform question'. The judge added: 'The law does not compel a government, or a parliament, to provide the answer the claimants seek. This claim is dismissed accordingly.' In a statement after the ruling, the mother named EFG said: 'All of my choices were taken away from me for years by my abuser before I fled. I've fought hard to get on with my life for me and my kids. But the two-child limit makes it more difficult. 'The government says that the exceptions are to protect people who – like me – didn't have a choice about the number of kids in their family, but the rape clause doesn't do that. The rules need to change to protect families like mine. The result today is disappointing but I will keep going and fight this to the end.' The other mother, LMN, said: 'I want to keep going with the case as I feel like it's against my human rights. When my oldest came back to live with me from care and before I got the exception for my youngest, we had to survive on less money. That stopped me doing things with the children – I never planned on having the children but that's not their fault.' Claire Hall, a solicitor at CPAG who represented the women, said they would look at appealing against the decision, but in the meantime, 'all eyes are on the government which has the chance to do the right thing and abolish the inhumane two-child limit in the autumn child poverty strategy'. Hall added: 'Our clients have provided their children with safe and loving home environments but the rules have failed to protect them and their children from the impacts of the two-child limit.'
The Independent
03-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Former Labour MP fires parting shot at government in resignation
Independent MP Zarah Sultana has announced her intention to co-lead a new political party alongside Jeremy Corbyn. Ms Sultana resigned from the Labour Party, having had her whip suspended last year for voting to abolish the two-child benefit cap. The new political initiative is set to include other independent MPs, campaigners, and activists from across the country. Sultana criticised the existing political landscape, arguing that the two-party system leads to "managed decline and broken promises". She protested against the government's policies on social welfare and shared her opposition to the two-child benefit cap and cuts to winter fuel payments.
Sky News
06-06-2025
- Business
- Sky News
Rachel Reeves faces the numbers - can she cut it?
👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈 As Rachel Reeves prepares for next week's spending review, Beth explains why it could be a defining moment for the government and the chancellor is faced with difficult choices. Harriet talks about the two-child benefit cap and whether the government can afford to scrap it. And as Sir Keir Starmer puts the country on a war footing, Sky ' s defence correspondent Deborah Haynes joins Beth, Ruth and Harriet to talk about the strategic defence review and why there ' s no argument across parliament about defence spending. Deborah also talks about her own podcast The Wargame, which is out next week and simulates an attack on the UK.
Telegraph
27-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Farage is wrong about the two-child benefit cap. We must keep it
Spiralling welfare spending is bankrupting Britain. By the end of the decade it's forecast to reach £378 billion. We face a reckoning unless we do something radical. But the conversation in Westminster is untethered from reality. Instead of debating how to bring the welfare bill down, and move hundreds of thousands of people off welfare into the dignity of work, the question is whether we should add to that bill by scrapping the two-child benefits cap. Until now Starmer has upheld it. Morgan McSweeney – the advisor who directs the Prime Minister's every move – has told him that it's too unpopular to do away with. But with his hard Left backbenchers turning on him, the puppet Prime Minister has cut his strings and looks set to scrap the cap. Let's be clear what we're talking about here. The two-child benefit cap doesn't refer to child benefit. That benefit is available to all parents for all their children. It refers to those on universal credit. They received thousands of pounds on top of their child benefit for their first two children. The cap stops them receiving even more for their third, fourth and fifth child and so on. Why? Because allowing families to have children that they can't afford while prudent savers who do the right thing are forced to wait wasn't right. The two-child benefits cap is in place as a matter of fairness. I certainly thought carefully about the financial implications of having children – as do the vast majority. It is about personal responsibility; of living within your means so not to impose unnecessary burdens on others. Before the cap was introduced in 2017 there were scores of workless families with ten or more children living on state benefits worth more than £60,000 a year, much more money than they could hope to earn if they entered the job market. They would need to earn £93,000 to be left with the same amount of money after tax. And on top of that, they were entitled to be housed at the taxpayer's expense in ever-larger properties as their number of children increased. It was a trap for welfare dependency. The decision to scrap it would cost an estimated £3.5 billion a year, and would likely rise each year as workless families choose to benefit from it. As Kemi Badenoch rightly pointed out, it is a handout that will disproportionately benefit larger migrant families who could have lived here for as little as five years. So why is Farage backing this mad policy? Has a joint found its way into his usual pack of Marlborough Golds? Has he cooked this up after one too many pints at his local? This is without doubt Farage's biggest mistake. He's diagnosed the illness, but prescribed the wrong cure. We agree that demography is destiny. In the 1970s, there were four working age people to every pensioner. Now, we're fast approaching a ratio of two to one. That's pushed total tax receipts down and forced spending up for the same level of services. Without Brits having more children taxes will continue to rise, debt will explode, and public services will crumble under pressure. Most of the falling birth rate is explained by more women having no children at all. Scrapping the two-child policy would do nothing to change that, but will shred the fraying social contract between the state and our shrinking middle classes. The solution is to make families affordable again. Young adults are currently spending more money than ever on housing costs, leaving them with little disposable income to starts a family. It's why we must densify our cities and radically curtail housing demand from immigration, neither of which Labour are doing. A government serious about pro-family policy would make childcare cheaper and use the tax system to incentivise parenting – but Labour refuse to. Instead, Labour and Reform are locked in a bidding war to spend more in handouts. We already spend £100 billion annually just to service our debt – more than on healthcare, education or defence. Their dangerous game will eventually come crashing down. Robert Jenrick is the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
Sky News
27-05-2025
- Business
- Sky News
Ministers considering scrapping two-child benefit cap, education secretary says
Ministers are considering scrapping the two-child benefit cap, the education secretary told Sky News. Bridget Phillipson, asked by Wilfred Frost on Sky News Breakfast if the cap should be lifted, said: "It's not off the table. "It's certainly something that we're considering." The policy means most families cannot claim means-tested benefits for more than their first two children born after April 2017. Ms Phillipson's comments are the strongest a minister has made about the policy potentially being scrapped. Analysis by The Resolution Foundation thinktank over the weekend found 470,000 children would be lifted out of poverty if parents could claim benefits for more than two children. However, Ms Phillipson said the government inherited a "really difficult situation" with public finances from the Conservative government. "These are not easy or straightforward choices in terms of how we stack it up, but we know the damage child poverty causes," she added. 2:37 The education secretary, who is also head of the government's child poverty taskforce, said ministers are trying to help in other ways, such as expanding funded childcare hours and opening free breakfast clubs. She said it is "the moral purpose of Labour governments to ensure that everyone, no matter their background, can get on in life". Her "personal mission" is to tackle child poverty, she said. Sir Keir Starmer is said to have privately backed abolishing the two-child limit and requested the Treasury find the £3.5bn to do so, The Observer reported on Sunday. The government's child poverty strategy, which the taskforce is working on, has been delayed from its original publication date in the spring.
