Only a government with no soul would impose such poverty on children

According to The Sunday Times rich list, the wealthiest British households have a combined fortune of £795 billion – a sum larger than the entire Polish economy – while around 3.7m children suffer food insecurity. Here is our broken economic model in brutal numbers.

Keir Starmer’s Labour government has decided, by choice, to impose this violence on children. This may seem like a shocking accusation to level, particularly when the focus here is the two-child benefit cap, which of course was introduced by the Conservatives.

Banning Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit for a third child or more, it was driven purely by a desire to fuel the toxic Victorian caricature of the undeserving poor, breeding out of control. If it was driven by a desire to drive parents into work, 57% of children affected had at least one parent in work – and research found it had no impact on employment levels either.

If it was driven by a desire to limit family size, another study found it fails on that count.

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What it does achieve is driving a quarter of a million children below the poverty line and another 800,000 further into hardship, with a total of 1.5m kids affected. Even if took a moralising position, you are condemning children for decisions made by their parents.

In the UK, in 2024, parents skip meals to feed their little ones, while kids turn up to schools with bowed legs and heart murmurs because of malnourishment. Children in poverty are more likely to suffer from physical health conditions, such as asthma, as well as poor mental health. These can last into adulthood. Little wonder that research suggests child poverty costs the UK around £39bn a year.

It should be a no-brainer for a newly elected Labour government to scrap a policy which is cruel to children, which fails on its own terms, which harms society, and which imposes a huge financial cost.

After all, it would only cost between £2.5bn-£3.6bn to abolish the limit, a pinprick compared to total UK annual expenditure of around £1.2 trillion.

(Image: PA)

Keir Starmer confirmed he would give Ukraine £3bn a year for as long as needed, so money can be found if something is considered important.

Labour could raise taxes on the well-to-do. In summary, Labour’s decision is to drive kids into poverty is a choice. The Tories once owned this. Now every child driven into deprivation is on Starmer and his government.

Labour backbenchers and the SNP have led the charge in opposing this monstrous policy. But Starmer has sought to fob them off, setting up a taskforce consulting various NGOs to come up with suggestions.

In straightforward English, this is known as “kicking the can down the road”. Starmer has been Labour leader for four years. He could have set up such a taskforce to develop policy on poverty long ago.

What possible taskforce is needed to decide that the two-child cap needs abolition? Every single child poverty charity believes the cap must go.

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This is, in straightforward terms, playing political games with the lives and wellbeing of children.

Before the election, Starmer told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that “we’re not changing that policy”. He did so because he believed it made him sound tough. This is all you need to know.

How to describe a politician who believes that toughness is defined by how prepared they are to punish kids with poverty? The English language offers us many words, none of them kind.

Does Starmer think he would have lost the election had he not committed to imposing hardship on struggling families? What does he think the Labour Party is for if it does not consider lifting kids out of hardship to be a priority?

It may well be that Labour eventually U-turn, thanks to rising pressure. Are you really comfortable with leaving hundreds of thousands of children for another year or two or however long before Labour’s spin doctors think it’s politically opportune to flick the switch and end the biggest single generator of child poverty?

Every day the cap remains in place is another day of struggle: every day, a lasting and incalculable cost to the child and society remains.

It is notable that Gordon Brown has been among the voices demanding the cap go: whatever my profound differences with his politics, I never doubted that he cared deeply about child poverty.

No-one in this government shows the same commitment.

We must hope they will forced to do the right thing, in the shortest possible time.

But here is yet more evidence of a government without a moral purpose, without a beating heart – without a soul.