Rachel Gilmour MP calls on Government to scrap two-child benefit cap

Today, MP for Tiverton and Minehead, Rachel Gilmour, has called on the Government to scrap the two-child limit to benefit payments following the new report released over the weekend by The End Child Poverty Coalition charity. 

The report, named ‘At the Limit’, shows how, across the Tiverton and Minehead constituency, 10% of children live in a family where benefits have been reduced due to the two-child benefit cap. This comes as the report also discloses how scrapping the policy could benefit the constituency by £2.1 million per year. 

According to The End Child Poverty Coalition, “families are losing out on £3,514 in 2025/26 for each child above the two-child limit”, as “1 in 9 children across the UK are affected by this policy.”

Last year, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) declared that a reversal of the two-child benefit limit, which was originally introduced in 2017, would lift 540,000 children across the UK out of poverty.   

In March, when asked “whether an assessment was made of the potential benefits of removing the two-child benefit cap”, Minister for the Department of Work and Pensions, Alison McGovern, responded, “we are taking account of a considerable range of different policy options, carefully working through the impact that they would have, but all the children in this country matter.” 

MP for Tiverton and Minehead, Rachel Gilmour, said: 

“The report released last week by The End Child Poverty Coalition clearly shows how children across the Tiverton and Minehead constituency have been dragged into poverty by the two-child benefit cap. 

Politics is about choices, and I don’t believe that any Government policy should be forcing children into poverty the way that this policy does. I am calling on the Government to immediately review the policy around the two-child benefit limit.”