Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

2nd reading & Money resolution
Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I am very proud to support the Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill. It will tackle child poverty and restore basic fairness to our social security system. I, like many other Labour Members, have been campaigning on this issue since I became an MP. I thank the Child Poverty Action Group and the Trussell Trust, as well as the food bank volunteers who have been in to lobby me about this issue for a very long time. This win is for the families in my constituency who I see in my surgeries and in their homes. I think of one family who literally move a light bulb around from room to room because they are so scared of the cost of using additional electricity. That is just one example of the real impact that poverty has on a family.

I am glad that we are dismantling this cruel and unfair policy today, and that we are continuing the job of fixing a broken system, set up by the Conservatives, that has led to children not having the basics or the opportunities that everyone in our country should have. Six months after this policy was brought in nine years ago, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, visited the UK and produced a report on the poverty levels that he found here. He said that we had a

“punitive, mean spirited, and often callous”

benefit system and that the high levels of child poverty were not inevitable but a “political choice”. That was back in 2018.

Every single day since the Conservatives forced this two-child benefit cap through, 109 children have been pushed into poverty, not because of anything they or their parents have done but because an arbitrary policy denied them the support they need. It was always indefensible. Because of the failings of the Conservative Government, child poverty in the UK has risen faster than in 37 other high-income countries over the past decade. That is a national disgrace.

Removing this limit will lift 450,000 children out of poverty by 2029. That is what real, measurable change looks like. I was on the child poverty taskforce for over a year, and we really drilled down into what could make the most difference. Scrapping the two-child benefit cap was always at the top of the measures. I am proud that our strategy also brings in many other ways in which we can support families.

We know who is being hit the hardest by this policy, with 68% of the families affected having a child under five. The early years shape everything that follows: health, education and life chances. Inequality in childhood becomes inequality for life. This Bill gives us the chance to break that cycle. The latest universal credit data shows the scale of the damage. In April 2025, 700 households in Putney were denied a child element for at least one child because of this policy. That meant that 900 children received no support and 2,490 children in total were living in households hit by the two-child limit. Across Wandsworth, the picture was even starker, with 1,820 households affected, 2,330 children denied support and a total of 6,540 children living in households impacted by this cruel rule.

It is a rule based on the fiction that families in poverty plan before they have children—that they plan ahead to be in poverty for the long term and decide on the number of children they will have in their loving family on the basis of that—rather than a policy that is there for families whenever they are in real need. We have got those parents’ backs and we have got those children’s backs, no matter what number they come in their family. Scrapping the two-child limit will be transformative for those families and for their communities. It will change whole disadvantaged communities in my constituency, across London and across the United Kingdom, who all currently pay the price for the high numbers of children in poverty, whether those children are in their own family or not.

The Bill is part of this Government’s wider mission to build a fairer country; to support, not penalise, families; to support parents into secure and better paid work; to deliver more affordable homes; to cut the cost of living; and to give every child the best possible start in life.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Member on her speech. Evidence shows that the two-child limit has not changed fertility or employment but that it has coincided, sadly, with a disproportionate rise in abortions among mothers with two or more children. Does she agree that removing the two-child limit will better support mums and help to ensure that no woman feels pushed towards an abortion because she cannot afford another child?

[Fleur Anderson]

The hon. Member highlights one of the many painful decisions that people have to make on the back of this policy, such as decisions about heating or eating and about what to do in their families. She also highlights the fact that the whole of Northern Ireland will benefit from this Bill as well. We need to bring every child across the whole of the United Kingdom up, and lifting this policy will do that. It is fair across every part of the United Kingdom for all the families who are affected. I thank her for raising a different aspect that this policy has introduced.

I am proud to support the Bill, and I urge Members across the House to do the same.