Budget Resolutions

Janet Daby Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I thank the Chancellor and her team for a very welcome Budget. This is our Government’s second successive Budget, and it is focused on addressing the cost of living. It will ensure that everyone pays their fair share towards public services, and it invests in communities up and down the country. I will focus mainly on the cost of living, defence and overseas development aid.

As Members will be aware, many people across our country are facing great challenges to meet the cost of essentials. Food banks should be a thing of the past. Through this Budget, the Government are working towards making them a thing of the past by focusing on getting children out of poverty and getting young people into work through apprenticeships, and by bringing down energy costs. I strongly believe that prevention is far better than cure. The Government know that that is so, which is why they are investing in and focusing on early family help and early intervention, and lifting the two-child benefit cap, which is a significant measure.

I would hope the whole House would agree that no child should go hungry or without basic necessities, but from what I have heard from Conservative Members, I am not so sure that is the case. To those Members I say: child poverty damages the UK economy in the long term and makes those children less likely to perform as well as their peers in education and employment. Lifting the two-child benefit cap is, therefore, better for the economy. It will break the cycle of disadvantage and deprivation, and improve the life chances of children nationwide, wherever they are experiencing child poverty.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I want to confirm my party’s support for the Government’s change to the two-child benefit cap. Child poverty levels in Northern Ireland are some of the highest in all of the United Kingdom; between 30% and 35% of children are in poverty. This change will bring them out of poverty and mean a better life for people. My party agreed with the amendment on the two-child benefit limit put forward by the SNP to the King’s Speech, so today is good news for us and for those children in poverty in Northern Ireland.

[Janet Daby]

I thank the hon. Member for his support for the Chancellor’s Budget and the lifting of the two-child benefit limit. I agree with what he said.

I remind Members what my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) said: 70% of children in poverty have parents who are in work. Children are not in poverty because their parents are not working. This Government are doing everything they can to lift children out of poverty. I also remind Members about the Children Act 1989, which states that the welfare of the child is paramount. If memory serves me correctly, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs refers to food. Getting children out of poverty means ensuring that no child goes hungry and that children have their basic needs met. This Government are very much committed to that, which is why I am delighted that the measure is in the Chancellor’s Budget.

[Matt Rodda]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Is she ready to move on to the importance of breakfast clubs? Last week, I had the pleasure of welcoming the Prime Minister and the Education Secretary to Reading, where they visited a breakfast club providing excellent support to many children. The programme to expand them is really valuable, as it will invest in our young people and make huge differences to families. It will also help employers by helping mums and dads to get to work earlier.

[Janet Daby]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. I will indeed come to breakfast clubs—how could I miss them out?

The Resolution Foundation has estimated that scrapping the two-child limit would bring 330,000 children out of poverty and prevent a further 150,000 children from falling into poverty over the course of this Parliament. Children in my constituency will therefore have an improved standard of living, which is exactly what I want for them, just as Labour Members—and others, I am sure—want for their children. In fact, it is estimated that in Lewisham East, 3,530 children’s experience of relative child poverty will be reduced.

That builds on the vital work already begun by this Government, including on expanding access to free school meals, opening free breakfast clubs in every primary school and investing in historic amounts of affordable and social housing. Alongside that, we have the recently announced freeze of rail fares and prescription prices.

Every child deserves to be free from poverty and the effects of poverty. For far too long, successive Conservative Governments allowed child poverty to skyrocket; this Government will not. As a result of that failure, almost a fifth of children in my constituency grow up in poverty, but with the policies announced today, it is evident that the Labour Government are tackling child poverty as the moral imperative that it is.

[Lincoln Jopp]

Does the hon. Member acknowledge that whether parents get their money from income or from benefits, the Government, having inherited 2% inflation, have taken it up to 3.6%, which reduces the value of that pound in parents’ pockets?

[Janet Daby]

Parents want to provide for their children. Parents make choices, and the Government are making choices to support parents. We are doing that by lifting the two-child limit; Opposition Members should support that. We must not forget that these announcements have been made possible by making tough choices. Following the previous Government’s mismanagement, the nation was faced with an appalling fiscal situation.

I turn to defence. The Government are investing in capital investment over the course of the Parliament to kick-start the rebuilding of our armed forces, which is absolutely necessary when we consider how unrest in Europe is coming closer to our shores every day.

Since 2010, economic growth in my constituency of Lewisham East has lagged 30% behind the national average—that trend has been repeated in many other regions. The investment that will support councils and communities across the UK is therefore desperately needed.

Finally, as a member of the International Development Committee, I turn to international development. The UK has been at the forefront of global efforts in particular to prevent violence against women and girls, to promote peace and co-operation between different ethnic and religious groups, and to support the economic development of communities across the world. I am therefore pleased to see that paragraph 4.61 of the Red Book says:

“The government remains committed to restoring ODA spending to 0.7% of Gross National Income”

as their fiscal forecasts continue to improve. I am pleased that we are still focused on that, so that we can promote overseas the values and rights that we enjoy here in the UK.