DERRY JOURNAL Editorial: Good riddance to unjust and socially harmful two-child cap
Whatever her motivation Rachel Reeves made the right decision to scrap the unjust and socially harmful two-child benefit cap in her Budget on Wednesday.
The British Chancellor appears to have heeded some of her own backbenchers and recognised the unnecessarily cruel and regressive cap must go.
The two-child limit on Universal Credit and Tax Credits stopped parents with a third child born in or after April 2017 from claiming extra support. This deprived hard-pressed families of over £3,000 per child for their third and subsequent children and exacerbated the phenomenon of child poverty, not least in Derry, one of the worst-affected areas in Ireland or Britain.
Last April the End Child Poverty Coalition estimated 3,260 children (12.95 per cent) in 950 Derry homes were poorer due to two-child limit. Welcoming the abolition of the cap this week Karen Mullan, Director of the Foyle Network Foundation, spoke of how the measure had ‘driven countless families into severe hardship and poverty, with many forced to turn to food banks to survive’.
Ms. Reeves’ decision will hopefully bring some reprieve to those parents who Ms. Mullan says have been skipping meals to ensure their children have a barely adequate level of nutrition and sustenance.
It is scarcely believable this is matter of debate in a polity that has aspirations to be a civilised society. Yet in the British Houses of Parliament there are the usual suspects who would continue to take food out of infants’ mouths if they had their way.