Starmer hints two-child benefit cap will be scrapped at budget

Sir Keir Starmer has powerfully hinted the two-child payment headdress volition beryllium scrapped astatine the fund - aft the chancellor did the same.

Asked if helium would beryllium getting escaped of the cap, the premier curate told ITV: "We won't person to hold overmuch longer, but I wouldn't beryllium telling you that we're going to thrust down kid poorness if I wasn't wide that we volition beryllium taking a fig of measures successful bid to bash so."

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On Monday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves besides signalled she volition assistance the cap, which presently means families cannot assertion kid benefits for much than their archetypal 2 children.

"I don't deliberation that it's close that a kid is penalised due to the fact that they are successful a bigger family, done nary responsibility of their own," she told the BBC.

"So we volition instrumentality enactment connected kid poverty."

Ms Reeves besides mentioned she had spoken to erstwhile Labour PM and chancellor Gordon Brown connected Sunday and Monday.

He told Sky News connected Monday greeting helium is "confident" the two-child payment headdress volition change astatine the budget.

Mr Brown, who has agelong campaigned to get it lifted, said: "I americium assured that the two-child regularisation volition beryllium addressed.

"We're waiting for Rachel Reeves's budget, which I deliberation volition notation this.

"Keir Starmer, I cognize is personally acrophobic and funny successful this.

"So I'm hopeful that successful the adjacent fewer weeks we'll spot the benignant of enactment that we've been talking about."

The existent Labour authorities has had a hard narration with the policy, with the PM suspending 7 of his MPs 2 weeks aft winning the predetermination for voting against the authorities to assistance the cap.

Lifting it volition outgo £2.8bn, thing ministers person had to grapple with arsenic they effort to plug a increasing economical achromatic hole.

Ms Reeves besides mentioned Mr Brown is 1 of her governmental heroes due to the fact that helium did truthful overmuch to assistance children retired of poverty, and said it was the crushed she went into politics.