Is this the worst social policy ever?

“The worst social security policy in history.”

“Heinous.”

“You could not design a policy better to increase child poverty than this one.”

These are but three descriptions of the two-child benefit limit policy. Many, many other critics have railed against the policy ever since it was first announced.

A mere three weeks into the new government and the two-child benefit limit has become a political flashpoint. During votes on the King’s Speech, seven Labour MPs voted for an SNP amendment which called for the two-child benefit limit to be scrapped.

Following this act of rebellion, in a show of political authority, Starmer removed the whip, saying via his spokesman that it would be removed for a time-limited period.

But was he right to do so? Or did the Labour MPs who rebelled have a point? What should a Christian make of the limit?

As a Christian who’s been involved in public policy now for nearly 8 years in total, I’ve always been vaguely aware of the two-child limit. And I’ve always vaguely thought it a bad idea, without ever being sure as to why, or even what, the rationale was behind it in the first place.

So, with the vote happening this week, it seemed as good an opportunity as ever to look into it. I wanted to understand the story of the cap and also what supporters and critics alike think today.

If I’m honest, what I have learned has horrified me. To lay my cards on the table from the start, I simply cannot fathom a justification for continuing with this policy at all. It appears to have been a total failure and far from achieving fairness, its main justification, it has compounded inequality, as well as sending a terrible message to parents with larger families.

Need convincing that robust, biblical Christianity has something to offer public policy debates? Look no further than the two-child limit. Once you grasp the importance of family, marriage and having children in the Christian worldview, surely we would conclude that the two-child limit is morally wrong and should be scrapped immediately?

Let me explain why.

The idea itself was announced by the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith. In October 2012, he gave a speech outlining proposed changes to child benefit and tax credits. He suggested that payments should be limited to the first two children of any family.

This led to a furious backlash from charities and the Liberal Democrats especially who at the time were in coalition with Duncan Smith’s own party. The policy drew comparisons with China’s notorious ‘one child’ population control policy. The big argument in its favour was that it would reduce the welfare bill by £1.3 billion.

This was a time of austerity. The Coalition Government under David Cameron as PM and Nick Clegg as Deputy PM was busy implementing a series of cuts in public spending in order to address major problems with the nation’s finances (remember the infamous ‘there is no money’ note left by the outgoing Labour government?). Government departments, including the Department of Work and Pensions, were commanded by the Treasury under George Osborne to find savings and reduce costs.

Initially, No. 10 refused to back IDS and his two-child benefit limit idea. But three years later in the 2015 budget, the two child-limit was formally introduced. When delivering the Budget, Osborne announced that from 6 April 2017, support provided to families – whether through tax credits, Housing Benefit or Universal Credit – would be limited to two children. Subsequent children would no longer be entitled to the ‘child element’, which at the time was £231.67 a month.

Is the policy fair?

Here is how the Conservative-led Coalition Government at the time justified the policy:

“On top of Child Benefit for every child, an out of work family with five children claim over £14,000 a year in tax credits alone. The government believes that those in receipt of tax credits should face the same financial choices about having children as those supporting themselves in work.”

This quote gets to the heart of what the proposal was trying to do. For Mr Duncan Smith and some of his Tory party colleagues this was ultimately about fairness. It was felt that families on benefits should face the same financial choices in deciding family size as those families who are working.

Yet this entire rationale has been repeatedly questioned. For example, a report from the Work and Pensions Committee in March 2019 said this:

“We are not convinced by the Government’s argument that the cap restores fairness to the benefits system. Families in work were already better off than similar families who were out of work, even without the cap.”

In other words, the basic justification for the policy is false. Work does pay more than benefits, even if there are exceptions to that, they are a minority.

Has the policy actually worked?

Two other aims were articulated for the policy: firstly, to reduce the welfare budget and secondly to incentivize work or force a parent to increase their working hours.

Before assessing the policy in principle, it is worth asking: has it worked?

This is a policy that has affected over 300,000 families and 1 million UK children. While it has certainly saved the government and the taxpayer money, it has manifestly not succeeded in changing the number of families choosing to limit the number of children. A study found it led to a mere five per cent increase in the number of families choosing to limit the number of children.

What about the goal of incentivizing more parents into work, or increasing their working hours? Again, it would appear this policy goal has not been met. A major study by the London School of Economics found that the two-child benefit cap fails to understand why parents in low-income families prioritise caring roles over work. It also fails to take account of the costs and complications of taking on more hours, such as finding accessible and affordable childcare.

So, the two-child benefit limit has failed to meet two of its stated policy aims. But the criticism of the policy did not stop there.

Here’s what the policy HAS achieved…

Back in 2015, a collection of Church Ministers and denominations – Church of England, Methodists, Baptists – alongside other faiths labelled the move ‘anti-family’. They warned it would likely have a detrimental impact on both abortion rates (pushing more women to have an abortion) and family stability.

Turns out that these leaders were prophetic in their concerns.

In December 2020, a report by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) found 57% of women who were aware, and likely to be impacted by, the two-child limit said it impacted their choices (over an abortion). Moreover, after the limit kicked in, there was a sharp increase in the number of abortions, no doubt in part connected to the policy.

There is also evidence that this policy disproportionately affects certain communities. For example, one charity said the two-child limit “undermines the rights of parents who have conscientious or religious objections to birth control or abortion, or for whom larger families are a tenet of faith, with particularly severe implications for certain faith communities.”

So, not only is the two-child benefit limit built on a foundation of sinking sand, failed in its policy objectives but it is also discriminatory.

What then is the justification for keeping the policy? Surely the only remaining justification is economic. Since re-introducing tax credits and benefits for the third child (and the fourth and fifth etc…) would cost a lot of money, supporters of the limit must believe the savings are worth the cost of keeping some low-income families in poverty.

Not only do I profoundly disagree with this whole line of thinking – it is callous and adopts the wrong lens entirely – there is another angle on this we must consider.

Anti-marriage, anti-family, anti-children

It is part of a wider, anti-family agenda and narrative. For far too long, in this country we have facilitated and allowed family breakdown to grow and grow. So scared are we of being judged or being seen as judgmental that we have failed to craft family policies that engage with the simple and demonstrable truth that children generally speaking are better off when they grow up with both parents. We have failed to give parents adequate choice and prioritised the economy and financial gain over the strength of our social fabric.

In the Christian worldview, families are the very bedrock of a strong society. Right at the beginning, in Genesis 2:24, we read that a new family comes into existence when the man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife. Taking place before the fall, the existence of both marriage and family in Genesis 1-2 teach us that both are God’s good design for this world.

Other scriptures emphasise the goodness of both. Marriage becomes a picture of Christ and His Church (Ephesians 5). Psalm 127 says that children are a blessing from God. Jesus welcomed the little one’s and rebuked his disciples for being too harsh with them.

This does not mean that biological family is everything. Through the redemption on offer thanks to Jesus and His perfect life and sacrifice on the Cross, the most important family for anyone to belong to is the family of God. You will find a union with brothers and sisters in Christ that is far stronger than blood relations. Praise God that in the family of the church, all of us can be spiritual sons, daughters, mums, dads, aunts, uncles and grandparents.

And yet the plan of God for the ordering of society in a way that helps His image-bearers to flourish has not changed. The State should listen to God’s wisdom. It should craft policies to encourage marriage and to strengthen family life. In light of what we have seen in this article, this should mean abolishing the two-child benefit limit. Doing so would send a message that the state will not penalize you for having more than two children! Some have also estimated that scrapping the limit would lift 300,000 children out of poverty.

Of course, we must not fall for the lie that abolishing the two-child benefit limit would solve child poverty. It would not. It would help, but to truly address poverty, we need to go deeper and think bigger. Full-scale structural reforms are needed to see poverty ended. In the Bible, we see laws designed to give people a handout, as well as a hand-up. Any welfare system worth its salt will do both. It will provide immediate help to the neediest, and tackle the root causes of poverty as well.

Where next for the two-child limit? It will take an act of political will and boldness to scrap it. When a new government is in place, it has an indeterminate period of time to be bold. Tony Blair says he wishes his government had been bolder in its first 100 days. The clock is ticking on Starmer. Will he do the right thing and scrap the policy? Time alone will tell.