Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Jeevun Sandher Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to speak for the next hour, while there is no time limit. [Laughter.] Buckle in!

I want to start today’s speech by first addressing what the Conservatives said and why we need state support to help end child poverty in the technological era we are in. I also want to make clear why we are ending the two-child limit. In the economic sense, yes, it is a pounds and pence issue—we save more money by feeding kids today—but far more importantly, morally no child in this country should be going hungry.

Before I get to that, I would like to share with the House where I spent two years of my life between 2016 and 2018, when I was the economist working in Somaliland’s Ministry of Finance. I was there during what was then its worst drought in living memory. When drought came to Somaliland—one of the poorest nations on earth—it meant failing harvests, dying livestock and rising hunger. I will never forget what that hunger looked like and what it felt like for a whole nation.

I could understand what was happening in Somaliland, even if it was incredibly difficult, but I was shocked and appalled on returning to this country to see children going hungry here—in the fifth richest nation on earth. Those children went hungry after the introduction of the two-child limit. Poverty went up in the largest families, who were affected by the two-child limit, and child hunger went up. Food bank parcels were unknown in my childhood; there were a million handed out in 2017, and three million by the time the Conservatives left office. Most shamefully of all, child malnutrition has doubled over the past decade. That is the shameful legacy of the two-child limit and what it meant for child hunger in this country.

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Trussell Trust was founded in this country in 2000, under a Labour Government, and that the Department for Work and Pensions did not recommend that it be offered as a solution to families in need at the time? It is one thing to talk about food banks, but it is important to ensure that we acknowledge when they were first set up in this country.

[Dr Sandher]

Did the guidance change between 2016 and 2024? Could the hon. Lady explain to me from the Opposition Front Bench why the number of food bank parcels tripled from the introduction of the two-child limit to 2024? I will give way if so.

[Rebecca Smith]

Well, without having the statistics in front of me right this second—[Interruption.] No, let me finish. We had the global pandemic, when there was a huge need for food banks. In fact, it was the Conservative Government who invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in food banks to ensure that nobody went without. The council for which I was a cabinet member at the time used the funding from the Conservative Government directly to ensure that poverty did not increase over the covid pandemic. If numbers went up, we have to ensure that that fact is reflected.

[Dr Sandher]

The rise happened before covid; it happened after the two-child limit was introduced. I agree with the hon. Lady on one point: she is not across the statistics.

Opposition Members have advanced an argument that I think is fair. They ask why we do not just create lots of jobs, which is the way to get out of poverty. The way to get out of poverty is through work, right? I want to take that argument head-on. We are living in a different technological era. In the post-war era, we had the advance and expansion of mass-production manufacturing, which meant there were good jobs for people as they left school. They left school, went to the local factory and earned a decent wage, meaning that they could buy a house and support a family.

Then, in the 1980s, in this country and indeed across high-income nations, we saw deindustrialisation and automation, bringing the replacement of those mechanical jobs with machines. Like other high-income nations across the world, we have been left with those who can use computers effectively—high-paid graduate workers—and lots of low-paid jobs everywhere else. It is not just us confronting that problem, although it is worse here because of decisions made in the 1980s; we are seeing it across high-income nations. As a result, state support is needed to ensure that those on low pay can afford a decent life.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Sandher]

In a moment.

This is not, by the way, the first time in history that we have confronted this problem. In the early part of the industrial revolution, between 1750 and 1850, we saw machines replace human beings. What did we see then? The economy grew by 60% per person, but people had less to eat. Men were shorter in 1850 than in 1750 because of the change of the technological era. I think my right hon. Friend would like to intervene.

[Gareth Snell]

I am an hon. Friend, not right honourable, though I welcome the promotion.

I have listened to this debate from outside the Chamber this afternoon and heard many Conservative Members talk about how the route out of poverty is through work. I absolutely and fundamentally agree with that, so I find it completely incongruous that whenever they have had the opportunity to vote for our make work pay Act, to increase stability in work and create well-paid jobs, they have voted against it. Indeed, only last week, the shadow Secretary of State made an argument for cutting the minimum wage for young people. How does my hon. Friend think that someone can argue, on the one hand, for work as a way out of poverty, but on the other, restrict the opportunities for work, push down pay and reduce the opportunities created for working people?

[Dr Sandher]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Conservative Members have often spoken about their employment record in office and how many jobs were created. Yet while that happened, child poverty and child hunger rose. Something is not right in their model of the world and there is something to review there.

There is no law of economics that says that just because someone works hard and is a decent person, they will earn a wage that can support a family. That is not the technological era we live in today. That is why we are ending the two-child limit today and I am so proud that we are doing so.

In an economic sense—in pounds and pence—as Labour Members realise and have stated, when we ensure that children have enough to eat, they learn more today and they earn more tomorrow. The cost of child poverty every single year is around £40 billion. The cost of ending the two-child limit is about £3.5 billion. It makes sense to invest today so that our children can eat and learn more, yet this is not just a matter of pounds and pence; as an economist, I often talk about that and I get it, but it is about so much more. This is about the moral argument. No child in this country should go hungry—no ifs, no buts and no exceptions. That is why I am so proud of this Bill, I am so proud to vote to end the two-child limit and I am so proud to be sat on the Labour Benches.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Slinger]

I thank my hon. Friend. I was very moved by his speech, which he delivered from a position of great knowledge and great concern built up over a very impressive career. He is absolutely right. I, of course, would not recommend people to take too seriously policies that are, as I said, populist policy hokey-cokey. To scrap or to reinstate? It is hard to tell. What we have seen from Reform UK is the concept of political triangulation being stretched absolutely to breaking point. In fact, it has broken, with some of the populist nonsense that Reform has spoken about in recent days.

[Dr Sandher]

I like a pint as well, as it happens—sometimes more than one—but I think it is fair to say that parents across this country will not appreciate getting 5p off each pint they buy, knowing that it will make more children hungry. I am pretty shocked by the trade-off there. I agree with supporting our pubs, and I will do it every single weekend as part of our patriotic duty, but that is not fair. There is another, more damaging, side to this which says that if we just deport and attack enough people, it will make us richer. That is absolutely something that we on this side of the House should reject, and something that Members on the other side of the House sometimes reject as well.

[John Slinger]

I could not have put it better, particularly the point my hon. Friend made about enjoying a pint. I too enjoy a pint, but linking something as serious as tackling child poverty to the price of a pint in our pubs is trivialising an incredibly serious topic—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) is speaking from a sedentary position. Would he like to intervene?