Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Lord Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate our maiden speech-makers today and join in the general welcome to them. I draw from the noble Lord, Lord Walker, a very wise remark when he reminded our governing party that it is indeed the Labour Party, not the “Benefits Party”. While I think that all of us here share the passion and the ambition to lift families out of poverty and to make sure that children can have fulfilling lives, in the strong words of the Minister, I think it is more difficult than just making a modest extension in benefit provision for certain families in our society. If only it were that easy, I am sure parties would have done it a long time ago. What we are embarking on, surely, is a very ambitious programme which is trying to help, without interfering unnecessarily, all those families in which the children do not get that right opportunity.

Some children in poor families are let down because there is simply a lack of money. They have loving parents, and if there were a bit more money, they would not have to make such invidious choices about meals and support for the children at school, and trips and outings. Others are let down by adults in their lives who control them, abusing them or spending the money on too much alcohol and drugs, and not concentrating on providing them with the stable financial background they need. Some children are born into families in which there may be plenty of money or too little money, but they lack those other important things. They lack love. They lack support. They lack ambition for the children. They do not provide the guidance that good parents and good grandparents try to provide.

The state cannot be everybody’s parent, nor do we want it to be. The state wisely says that the Government, or a local authority, will intervene and pre-empt the parents only in extreme cases. We are talking about influencing, encouraging and supporting the parents. That can be done by many of us. Everyone here has been on a remarkable journey in their lives to date. Many have overcome considerable difficulties, from background, resistance or opposition, and have achieved great things already, so the more we can get out and talk and engage and encourage, the more it is possible that we can turn on a light in young minds and that they can see that something is possible that the adults around them have not told them about. Or maybe we can enthuse their teachers, who need to put ambition into their lives. There is nothing wrong with ambition; it can be a force for good, and it is releasing children from poor backgrounds if we can communicate to them that maybe they can achieve great things too.

The noble Lord, Lord Bird, said it very well in his remarks on social mobility. But of course, we are interested only in one-way mobility: we want people to be able to move up. We are not so keen on people moving down, and we try to cushion or help if they move down too quickly. The more people we promote, the more people fall below the average; that is the way arithmetic works, but we want to live in a more prosperous society. There will always be people who are relatively worse off, but if it is around a much higher average living standard, then there will be so much more happiness in the world around us.

I say to the Government, given our shared ambitions to get more people out of poverty and give more encouragement to young people, that there are many other things than this Bill that they could or should be doing. The first thing is that it has to be much easier to get a job. Unfortunately, over the last 18 months, there has been a big rise in unemployment, and the combination of high taxes on jobs and on those businesses that need premises in our high streets—the shops and the entertainment and leisure businesses—has contracted the number of job opportunities. This will make it much more difficult for the Government to fulfil their ambitions, because this cannot be done without the good will and success of the entrepreneurs, as represented so ably here today by the noble Lord, Lord Walker.

The strand in Labour which is about the promotion of work and better working conditions is wholly admirable. Whenever I have been fortunate enough to run larger enterprises or be involved in their management, I have always been very encouraging of that strand in Labour. I have wanted people to be better paid, but it must be through bonuses or working smarter, so that the company can serve the public well without going bust. I have always wanted people to see that there is the chance of promotion. Most of us started with jobs we did not really want to do and had to work our way up. That is what ambition is all about.

The Government must think of a much bigger, bolder strategy. Paying extra benefits is not going to do it.