Thousands of families currently suffer under the financial pressure exerted by the two-child benefit cap in Britain. This policy has forced many households into poverty, infringing on children's rights to a decent life. According to a study by Child Poverty Action Group and the Church of England in 2019, 59% of families affected by the two-child limit had been forced to cut back on basic necessities like food, causing a dramatic increase in hardship. 

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child has the right to benefit from social security. Thus, policies that indirectly discriminate or create an undue burden should not be condoned. We are not only advocating for the alleviation of economic deprivation but also protecting children's rights to a decent and dignified life.

In a press release issued following the DWP release, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) said the estimates represented a “record high” for child poverty in the UK. The group said the release showed that “100,000 more children were pulled into relative poverty (after housing costs)” when compared with a year earlier. It added that this meant “4.3 million children (30% of all UK children) were in poverty” in 2022/23, “up from 3.6 million in 2010/11”. The group’s press release continued:

69% of poor children lived in working familie.s
46% of children in families with three or more children were in poverty, up from 36% in 2011/12.
Poor families have fallen deeper into poverty: 2.9 million children were in deep poverty (ie with a household income below 50% of after-housing-costs equivalised median income), 600,000 more than in 2010/11
36% of all children in poverty were in families with a youngest child aged under five.
47% of children in Asian and British Asian families were in poverty, 51% of children in Black/African/Caribbean and Black British families, and 24% of children in white families.
44% of children in lone parent families were in poverty.
34% of children living in families where someone has a disability were in poverty.

The current government has now said that it would scrap the benefit – but only when fiscal conditions allow for this, which doesn’t look like anytime soon.

But on the final day of debate on the King’s Speech on 23 July, the Scottish National Party put forward an amendment which called for the cap to be axed, gaining the support of the Greens, Plaid Cymru and some independent MPs, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.  But Labour voted against the amendment declaring their unwillingness to move to scrapping the cap and went as far as removing the whip from seven of its bank bench MP's for voting for the amendment.   

We the people that have signed this petition believe the current government should commit to scrapping this cap at the very earliest opportunity.