Labour has announced a sweeping child poverty strategy aimed at lifting more than half a million children out of hardship, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer calling it the most significant anti-poverty initiative introduced by any UK government.
The centrepiece of the plan is the scrapping of the two-child benefits cap, a policy brought in by the Conservatives in 2017 that had pushed more than 1.7 million children below the poverty line and limited support to low-income families.
From April next year, families with more than two children will be able to access full welfare support. With around 4.5 million children living in poverty across the UK two million of them in homes struggling to afford food, heating and housing the move has been widely welcomed by parents, charities and frontline support workers.
Alongside ending the cap, Labour’s plans include making it easier for Universal Credit recipients to access help with upfront childcare costs, expanding free school meals, and investing £8 million to reduce the number of families living in bed and breakfast accommodation.
More than 2,000 families had remained in such emergency housing for over six weeks in June, despite it being unlawful. Councils will now be legally required to notify schools and doctors when a child enters temporary accommodation, and new rules will prevent mothers and newborns from being discharged into unsuitable housing. In the last five years, 58 infant deaths have been linked to poor temporary accommodation.
Critics say the plan lacks a statutory target for reducing poverty levels, though Starmer insists the strategy reflects a moral mission to create lasting, generational change.
Visiting a childcare centre in Wales to launch the initiative, he described child poverty as the biggest barrier facing young people and said 70,000 children in Wales alone would benefit from lifting the cap.
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