Welsh Labour MP who’s an expert on child poverty defends voting to keep the two child benefit cap

Martin Shipton

Child poverty expert turned Welsh Labour MP Torsten Bell has defended his decision to vote against scrapping the two child benefit cap, despite arguing in favour of doing so for years.

Until being elected to Parliament as the MP for Swansea West at the general election, Mr Bell was chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, a think tank that specialises in the study of poverty and how to relieve it.

He recently published a book called Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back in which he condemns the two child benefit cap as a measure which has plunged many more children into poverty.

‘Appalling policy’

He states: “The goal of this appalling policy was to ensure that ‘families on benefits face the same financial choices about having children as families who are supporting themselves solely through work’ – implicitly meaning fewer births in bigger, poorer families.

“There’s little evidence it has had that effect … The limit must be abolished. Far from making families have fewer children, it has just made them far poorer. The costs involved in reinstating the lost benefit would be £2.5bn in 2024/25, but that is small compared with the damage being done: abolition of the limit would overnight lift half a million children out of poverty.”

Yet on Tuesday evening Mr Bell voted against an SNP amendment in the House of Commons that would have scrapped the two child cap.

Seven Labour MPs who voted for the amendment, including former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, have had the party whip withdrawn for six months.

Gwyn Williams, who was Mr Bell’s Plaid Cymru opponent at the general election, posted a comment to X that said: “Really disappointed that our new MP voted to keep the two child benefit cap despite writing an article in the Guardian earlier this year calling it immoral.”

Understandably lots of debate about child poverty this morning – something we as a country should spend much more time focusing on

— Torsten Bell (@TorstenBell) July 24, 2024

Since being elected to Parliament, Mr Bell has been appointed as an unpaid aide to Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden – a role he would have had to resign if he’d voted for the SNP amendment.

In a thread on X, Mr Bell defended his decision to back the government’s line, stating: “Understandably lots of debate about child poverty this morning – something we as a country should spend much more time focusing on

“The context here is the first Labour King’s Speech in 14yrs – implementing a manifesto just endorsed by the election result. No-one should be surprised that 98+% of Labour MPs voted for it/against amendments from other parties. That’s business as normal just days after an election

“More importantly we shouldn’t confuse parliamentary procedure with what actually matters – reducing child poverty, something I’ve spent my life working on – in the last Labour government (which did exactly that) and ever since.

“And the status quo is intolerable – over 4m children are now growing up in poverty, after a 700k increase under the Tories. And yes the recent rise has been dominated by children in larger families. Those numbers must come down because this is not what a decent society looks like

“Making that reduction happen was never about the chamber last night. Instead it will come through the strategy to reduce child poverty that the government is committed to. And the hard yards of making it a reality.

“A new child poverty unit is being established in the Cabinet Office and a ministerial taskforce to oversee the new strategy has been established. I’ve already spoken to both @leicesterliz [Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall] and @Alison_McGovern [Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions] about its important work.

“People are rightly impatient to see progress, but the government has to be allowed to develop and bring forward that crucial strategy. Reducing child poverty means bringing together not just social security policy, but labour market, housing and many other important areas.

“My case for optimism is that history tells us Labour governments do focus on child poverty and do deliver real change. I worked with Gordon Brown as child tax credits were rolled out and transformed lives – over half a million children were taken out of poverty.

“Plus you can already see how policies of this Labour government will make a difference. “Too many low earners not getting the hours work they want is a big feature of low income Britain today, and banning exploitative zero hour contracts will make their incomes more secure.

“As an aside, you don’t often see big changes to social security outside of fiscal events because decisions have to be made in the round (underpinned by fiscal forecasts). I spent long enough as an HMT [Treasury] civil servant to know the alternative is chaos. We’ve had quite enough of that.

“Ultimately the government, and all of us, will be judged not on votes during parliamentary game playing but on whether we deliver rising living standards and growing opportunities for the most disadvantaged in society in Swansea and across the country. Time for the hard work.”