Keir Starmer confirmed yesterday that a Labour government would keep the Conservatives' two-child benefits cap despite unease among his top team and leading academics over the policy, which has been blamed for pushing families into poverty.
Starmer said he was "not changing that policy", when asked whether he would scrap it if Labour won the next election. His shadow work and pensions secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, had condemned it as "heinous" just last month.
Labour had come under fresh pressure to vow to scrap the cap after it emerged that one in four children in some of England and Wales's poorest parliamentary constituencies live in families left at least £3,000 a year out of pocket as a result.
Starmer's decision to rule out lifting the cap caused alarm among anti-poverty campaigners and despair in the Labour ranks. It would cost about £1.3bn but the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is said to have concluded it would be unaffordable due to the state of the economy.
The Labour leadership's decision coincided with a major academic study into the effects of the two-child cap, which concluded that the policy had been a "poverty-producing" initiative over the past six years, causing hardship and anxiety to tens of thousands of low-income families.
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