A 'Cruel Policy', Ruth? I'd Say It's Not Cruel Enough...

This morning, about 300,000 children woke up in households affected by the benefit cap. Lots of these children – enough to fill more than 1,000 primary schools – will be living in cold and damp homes, with food cupboards near empty; in deep poverty that leaves normal childhood activities, such as after-school clubs, swimming lessons and family days out, far out of reach. Since 2020, I’ve been working with colleagues at the universities of York and Oxford and the London School of Economics to investigate the impact of the benefit cap and the two-child limit (commonly referred to as the two-child benefit cap) on families with three or more children.

She doesn't mean the effect on us, the long suffering taxpayer, of course.

In our research with families affected by the benefit cap, we have spoken to parents such as Lucy, who pays £1,375 a month to rent a mould-ridden, rat-infested property. At times, the cap has left her family with as little as £65 a week to survive on once the rent and some of the bills are paid. £65. For five of them. It is simply not possible to get by on that.

We spoke to Lucy four times over four years, and she was always doing all she could to move out of that property. But as our analysis of Zoopla listings shows, the housing just isn’t there.

How far afield was she looking? That often proves to be the stumbling block. 

But there is a complete absence of affordable housing in many areas.

In the areas that these people want to live, usually. They don't see the wisdom of cutting their cloth to meet their funds. 

Statistics released today reveal that 123,000 households in England, Scotland and Wales were affected by the benefit cap in May 2024, a rise of about 46,000 in just three months according to government figures. Introduced by George Osborne in 2013, the cap means the most a family without regular work can claim is £25,323 in London and £22,020 in the rest of the country.

In many countries, you wouldn't get anything if you didn't work for it!  

Both the benefit cap and the two-child limit sever a foundational principle within our welfare state that people should be entitled to support based on what they need.

'Entitlement' is the real issue here, isn't it? 

Lifting the benefit cap would provide immediate relief to hundreds of thousands of families such as Lucy’s and Zauna’s, who are currently facing a long, cold winter. What better way, after all, to start investing in our future than by ensuring children’s basic needs are met?

We do. There's a little thing called 'child support'.