Nigel Farage Says He Wants to Scrap the Two-Child Benefit Cap - But There's Something He's Not Telling You
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Nigel Farage has been making headlines recently by calling for the two-child benefits cap to be scrapped.
The limit, introduced by the Conservative Government under David Cameron in 2017, restricts support in Universal Credit and tax credits to two children in a family. Once families grow above this level, they get no additional support.
It effectively penalises children for coming from larger families, and has been blamed for pushing hundreds of thousands of them into poverty. PM Keir Starmer is under major pressure from his own MPs to ditch the limit.
But Cameron's policy didn't emerge in a vacuum. In 2015, one party demanded benefits be limited to two children.
It proposed "supporting a lower cap on benefits" and more specifically: "Limiting child benefit to two children for new claimants."
The party was the UK Independence Party, led by one Nigel Farage.
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The idea had been promoted in 2014 by the right-wing Policy Exchange think tank, which called for a stop to extra benefits at four children, and boasted at the time: "Many proposals by Policy Exchange, founded by a group including ministers Michael Gove, Francis Maude and Nick Boles, have found their way into Conservative manifestos in the past."
The electoral pressure of UKIP on David Cameron (as well as the deep blue roots of Policy Exchange) was, for all the hug-a-hoodie rhetoric, very significant. UKIP were polling around 12%, enough to block Conservative chances in dozens of seats.
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Cameron also, in that same election, adopted the UKIP policy of pledging a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. As my colleague Adam Bienkov has noted, it was barely picked up on at the time, but led to the most profound and likely-permanent change to Britain's constitution in half a century.
That 2015 Conservative manifesto pledged to "work to eliminate child poverty" while also cutting or freezing certain benefits.
The two aims were contradictory, and by the end of Cameron's term, in 2019, the Child Poverty Action Group found that in the space of two years, "an estimated 160,000 families have been affected by the two-child limit to date…the majority are working families and the majority have just three children."
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Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features
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Nigel Farage has been making headlines recently by calling for the two-child benefits cap to be scrapped.
The limit, introduced by the Conservative Government under David Cameron in 2017, restricts support in Universal Credit and tax credits to two children in a family. Once families grow above this level, they get no additional support.
It effectively penalises children for coming from larger families, and has been blamed for pushing hundreds of thousands of them into poverty. PM Keir Starmer is under major pressure from his own MPs to ditch the limit.
But Cameron's policy didn't emerge in a vacuum. In 2015, one party demanded benefits be limited to two children.
It proposed "supporting a lower cap on benefits" and more specifically: "Limiting child benefit to two children for new claimants."
The party was the UK Independence Party, led by one Nigel Farage.
EXCLUSIVE
Reform's Darren Grimes Accused of Lying After Police Deny Telling Him Not to Hold Council Surgeries for 'Security' Reasons
EXCLUSIVE: Local police have rejected the Reform UK deputy council leader's claim that they advised him not to meet his constituents
Josiah Mortimer
The idea had been promoted in 2014 by the right-wing Policy Exchange think tank, which called for a stop to extra benefits at four children, and boasted at the time: "Many proposals by Policy Exchange, founded by a group including ministers Michael Gove, Francis Maude and Nick Boles, have found their way into Conservative manifestos in the past."
The electoral pressure of UKIP on David Cameron (as well as the deep blue roots of Policy Exchange) was, for all the hug-a-hoodie rhetoric, very significant. UKIP were polling around 12%, enough to block Conservative chances in dozens of seats.
Don't miss a story
SIGN UP TO EMAIL UPDATES
Cameron also, in that same election, adopted the UKIP policy of pledging a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. As my colleague Adam Bienkov has noted, it was barely picked up on at the time, but led to the most profound and likely-permanent change to Britain's constitution in half a century.
That 2015 Conservative manifesto pledged to "work to eliminate child poverty" while also cutting or freezing certain benefits.
The two aims were contradictory, and by the end of Cameron's term, in 2019, the Child Poverty Action Group found that in the space of two years, "an estimated 160,000 families have been affected by the two-child limit to date…the majority are working families and the majority have just three children."
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Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.
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