“I urge you to listen to the voices in our party — and make the right choice: tax wealth and end the two-child benefit cap.”
Richard Burgon MP has written to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor calling for the two-child limit to be scrapped and for the introduction of a wealth tax, following reports that the Government has dropped plans to scrap the cap despite it being the single biggest driver of child poverty.
Dear Prime Minister and Chancellor
Re: Implement a Wealth Tax and Scrap the Two-Child Cap
I write following new Government data that lays bare the brutal impact of the two-child benefit cap on children – and in light of deeply concerning briefings to the media regarding the future of this policy.
Official figures published this week show that nearly 40,000 more children were affected by the two-child limit in the year to April. In total, almost 1.7 million children are now growing up in households hit by this cruel policy.
According to the Child Poverty Action Group, the cap has pushed 350,000 children into poverty, and a further 700,000 deeper into poverty, since it was introduced in 2017. Over 100 children are being pushed into poverty every single day by this cruel policy.
So I was deeply alarmed by recent media briefings suggesting that, despite the ongoing work of the Government’s Child Poverty Taskforce, the Government no longer intends to scrap the cap – reportedly because it has not delivered the scale of disability benefit cuts originally envisaged.
On Sunday 6 July, The Times reported a Downing Street source saying that lifting the cap is now considered “dead in the water.”
A Treasury source went further, telling the press: “MPs will need to acknowledge that there is a financial cost to not approving the welfare changes, whether that’s tax rises or not scrapping the two-child benefit cap. They need to understand the trade-offs.”
These anonymous briefings must stop — and I hope you will agree that it is utterly indefensible for the Government to pit vulnerable groups against each other in this way.
Nor is it necessary when there are clear alternatives – such as taxing wealth and those on the highest incomes more fairly, and ending the tax advantages that allow wealth to be taxed less than work.
One of those options is a Wealth Tax and there is growing support within our party for this. Former Labour leader Lord Kinnock is among those now backing such a move, and five trade unions — Unison, Unite, Usdaw, FBU and NASUWT — recently told The Telegraph they support a wealth tax and will press for its adoption.
Leading tax experts have shown that a 2% annual levy on assets over £10 million could raise up to £24 billion a year — more than enough to scrap the two-child cap and to introduce a whole swathe of measures to tackle the inequality that blights our society and which our party exists to challenge.
I urge you to listen to the voices in our party — and make the right choice: tax wealth and end the two-child benefit cap.
This can form a key part of the alternative approach that the Government urgently needs to adopt – as I fear the current path is alienating Labour supporters and paving the way for a Reform Government.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Burgon MP
- Richard Burgon is the MP for Leeds East, the Secretary of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
What if third and subsequent children find out they weren’t worth any money? Feels like a fascist policy. Thry need to save money another way such as a wealth Tax on assets that people who have assets wo t even notice. They are trying ti cut benefbecause a lot of people have them and it adds up to quite a lot but so would a wealth tax that would probably raise much more. They could scrap ir re-jig the fiscal rules as no-one wants them to copy the Tories anymore- that was tried with Blair ism