Benefits: Two-Child Limit

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The Office for National Statistics says that the average family size in the UK is 85% with two or fewer children and 87% for lone parents. Those are the statistics that we are currently working to.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate’s Question asked how the policy will improve family stability, mentioned in the Government’s impact assessment, which stated:

“Encouraging parents to reflect carefully on their readiness to support an additional child”,


could help family stability. The Government argued strongly when the Bill was going through that in the case of tax credits, it would not apply the two-child limit to children who had been born before last April, because parents did not know that the policy was coming in when they had those children. However, they are applying it precisely that way to universal credit. From next February, when universal credit opens out to big families, if you make a new claim and have children born before this policy was ever dreamed of, you will not get support for the third and subsequent children. Can the Minister explain how that is fair?