Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Baroness Janke Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow my noble friend Lady Teather’s eloquent maiden speech, and I congratulate her on it and welcome her thoughtful remarks. In her speech, her expertise and experience as a former Minister for Children and Families shone through, and her long-term commitment to work with charities and the NHS show her deep understanding of poverty in all its forms, particularly for refugees. I am sure we in this Chamber will very much welcome her experience and insight to the work we do here, particularly at this challenging time. I also pay tribute to her effective campaigning, having founded the APPG on Guantanamo Bay and chaired the APPG on Refugees when she was an MP. I am sure she is going to make valuable contributions to the work of this House as an enthusiastic and energetic colleague. Her voice will certainly be heard here, I am confident of that. It is a great pleasure to welcome her to these Benches; I wish her further success in the future and in her career in this House.

As we consider the Bill before us today, it is important to recognise the deeply egregious effects it seeks to remedy. The two-child limit is unjust and unfair and is a major driver of child poverty. It is discriminatory and hits hardest those who have the least and suffer the most, punishing children and setting siblings’ interests against one another within families. Some 25% of families affected are single parents with a child under three years old. Children of these families are doubly disadvantaged, having only one parent who is fully employed trying to make ends meet. Some 20% of all households affected by the two-child limit have at least one disabled child and 87,500 families affected lose around £3,500 per year.

Behind these figures, the reality of child poverty is about deprivation and misery. As a former teacher, I have seen it all too often: hungry children finding concentration in school impossible; teachers feeding the most desperate from their own pockets; parents missing meals so their children can eat; children and parents who have never known a holiday; the grinding anxiety and stress of trying to make meagre funds stretch even further and, quite honestly, just never having enough money. The humiliation and stigma of being poor compared to classmates and friends too often ends up in children being bullied in and out of school, for the old, cold and worn-out clothes that single out the poor or for not being able to go on school trips and visits or join sports and leisure clubs because your family simply cannot afford it. All this leads to a lack of confidence, feelings of inferiority and isolation, and subsequent poor attainment. It means that, by the age of 30, those who grew up poor are likely to be earning about 25% less than their peers. They are four times more likely to experience mental health problems, with growing consequences for worklessness and the benefits bill. They are more likely not to be in education, employment or training. I wonder whether the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, thinks this is a route out of poverty; I certainly do not.

This pernicious policy was justified by the previous Government on the basis that it would make parents claiming benefits face the same financial choices as those supporting themselves through work. The argument was that the policy would achieve fairness. However, such evidence as there is points entirely to the contrary. No evidence has been produced to show that the policy has achieved its declared objectives. If the previous Government did not produce that evidence, I fail to see how those who were part of it can stand up and defend it.

Half the families who will benefit from the removal of the two-child limit, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has said, were not on benefits when they had children, but catastrophes happen to families. People lose their jobs or become ill; families break up; people die or family members need extra care. This is why we have social security, as these misfortunes do not happen just to the poor; they happen to us all. Based on the arguments that the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, has put, only a household wealthy enough to withstand all life’s disasters could responsibly decide to have more than two children.

It has been argued that the two-child limit will encourage families to increase their income by finding more work, but, for many, especially lone parents, the difficulty of finding affordable childcare means that they cannot increase working hours but need to make their meagre income go even further. All too often, it is their children who suffer. Expert institutions have attributed the rising tide of child poverty to the two-child limit policy. Some 59% of families affected by the two-child limit are in work, so, again, the false dichotomy between people having children on benefits and people at work does not stand up here.

Abolition of the two-child limit has been a common cause between many Members of this House and campaigners outside Parliament. I pay tribute to those who have worked to get this policy changed, and I very much hope the Bishop of Durham is listening, because he, too, was a key campaigner on this.

It is good to see that action is now being taken to remove this policy through the Bill, but there is still some way to go to eliminate child poverty, including the removal of the punitive benefit cap, which we hope will soon follow. A successful country invests in its children: the people who will deliver our nation’s future. Our country has failed to do this so far, and a record 4.5 million children are in poverty.

The Bill, though long overdue, is a welcome step forward for the nation’s children. We look forward to the full implementation of the Government’s child poverty strategy, and in this spirit, we are pleased to support the Bill.