Welfare Spending

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

Poverty robs children of their future: it limits their life chances; impacts their long-term health; and reduces their ability to participate in the bits of childhood that widen their experience, build resilience and teach new skills.

We may live in a beautiful part of the world, but the children in South Devon who go to school hungry, who live in overcrowded and unsuitable accommodation, and whose parents are working two or three low-paid jobs just to make ends meet—they are the children whose lives have already been limited by the situation they are growing up in. Emma Hopkins, from the Mother’s Manifesto group in Totnes, told me that they had heard from mothers who were regularly skipping meals so that they could feed their children, living on the brink and racked with anxiety. The mental health impact of that is enormous. One mum of two, filling up on tea, was worried that her eldest child just does not believe her any more when she says she has already eaten.

That is not something we should hear in 2025. It sounds like something from a Dickens novel, but over 5,300 children in South Devon were living poverty in 2023, facing daily challenges that no child should have to endure. If the Government lifted the two-child limit today, families across my constituency and everywhere else would feel the difference immediately. Surely, if we want to reduce the welfare bill in the long term, we must lift children out of poverty now to give them the best chance to grow up healthy, with the best opportunities to go on to have meaningful work.

Some 4.5 million children across the UK are living in poverty, and the two-child limit is one of the biggest drivers of rising deep poverty among children. Alongside that, the benefit cap disproportionately harms some of the most vulnerable in our society. Single parents, disabled households and families struggling with high housing costs are penalised regardless of their actual needs. And in an area where the ratio of income-to-housing cost is one of the highest in the country, families in South Devon are particularly hard hit. That is not just unfair; it is a failed policy that is causing real harm to children and their families.

The Liberal Democrats believe that these arbitrary limits must be removed. We would replace them with an evidence-led approach to social security, one that recognises the complexity of family life and the genuine needs of children. Investing in children is not only right; it makes economic sense. Supporting families now reduces future strain on healthcare, social services and the justice system. It strengthens community and saves public money. The Government must end the two-child limit and the benefit cap. That is the most effective way to lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, and we owe it to our children to do better.