Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill

Lord Bishop of Leicester Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the introduction of the Bill and the opportunity today to comment on it. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Teather, on her truly excellent maiden speech, and I look forward to the maiden contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Antrobus, and the noble Lord, Lord Walker, as well as of other noble Lords.

I count myself very fortunate to have never experienced true poverty myself, but I have spent much of my working life living in communities where poverty was very real—both the absolute poverty of one of the poorest nations in Africa, where I worked for several years, and the relative poverty of inner-city Sheffield, where I was vicar for a decade before becoming Bishop of Leicester.

I have seen first-hand, therefore, that poverty is not just about material resources but also has a much wider psychosocial impact. Amartya Sen argued that poverty should be understood not as low income but as capability deprivation: the lack of real freedom or opportunities to live a life one has reason to value. Martha Nussbaum expanded Sen’s framework by proposing a list of central human capabilities—such as life, bodily health, imagination, emotion, affiliation, play, and control over one’s environment—which all societies should secure for every citizen as a matter of justice.

Added to this is what some have called the poverty-shame nexus: the mutually reinforcing relationship between material hardship and the emotional experience of shame. People in poverty can experience shame through various mechanisms: social stigma, being judged as lazy, undeserving, or morally inferior; institutional interactions—for example, public services that treat people disrespectfully; or cultural norms that define success and worth in material terms. Research has found that people internalise stigmatising narratives about poverty and, as a result, have lower self-esteem and self-worth, and avoid social interaction with others.

Universal credit and its system of sanctions arguably institutionalise the poverty-shame nexus. Although I accept that its introduction in 2013 brought a necessary simplification to welfare payments, I nevertheless believe that the system of sanctions in particular has an implicit moralising message. Claimants must continually prove that they deserve support because they are both “poor enough” and “trying hard enough”. I have spoken with people who describe the feeling of being “presumed guilty until you are innocent”, on the assumption that every person looking for help might be “cheating the system”.

It is my belief that the two-child limit to universal credit has only added to the poverty-shame nexus. The assumption would appear to be that if you are on universal credit and have more than two children you are somehow not being responsible. Yet I have three wonderful children—I am sure that many other noble Lords also have more than two children—and I confess that I did not make a financial calculation ahead of deciding to have a third child. I wonder how many of us did. Surely, then, we have a duty to lift the sense of shame from others, not reinforce it.

Bishops on this Bench have consistently opposed the two-child limit right from its introduction. Indeed, as has already been mentioned, the former Bishop of Durham introduced a Private Member’s Bill seeking to abolish the limit in 2022. For us, this is part of a much wider calling to combat poverty in all its forms, addressing its causes and wider effects. I know that noble Lords on all sides of this House share that concern. Our differences are more to do with how, rather than whether, it is done. Yet I dare to hope that, once this policy is changed, we can work together to find other areas whereby those who are caught in poverty are enabled to contribute their gifts and skills to wider society.