Families 'on tight rope' blame two-child benefit cap

Lewis Kirkbride said his blended family lost £1,200 when they moved in together

A dad who lost £1,200 a month in child benefit when his blended family moved in together said they were "one misfortune away from using foodbanks".

Lewis Kirkbride is one of many low income parents urging the government to drop the two-child benefit limit introduced in 2015.

He and his partner have four children between them, meaning they lost their entitlement to single-parent benefits and Universal Credit when they bought a house together.

Labour MP for Gateshead Central and Whickham Mark Ferguson said the new government inherited a £22bn "financial black hole" and they were unable to reverse the policy.

Mr Kirkbride and his partner both work full time but they are only just managing, he said.

"We are a blended family and didn't choose to have four children together," he added.

He said he felt they were doing "everything we are supposed to" but their lives were getting "harder and less secure".

He added: "We are one misfortune away - like a redundancy or car write-off - from seriously having to consider selling our house or using foodbanks."

Two-child cap

All children can get child benefit which is available to all families regardless of how many children they have.

Low income families are entitled to more help in the form of child tax credits and Universal Credit.

But in 2015 the previous Conservative government announced a new policy – the two-child limit.

It means low income families can only claim additional support for their first two children.

There are exceptions for families with twins or adopted children, for example.

But the thinktank Resolution Foundation, which focuses on low income families, said families capped by the two-child limit were losing up to £3,500 a year in benefit support for their third and each subsequent child.

Call for change

The North East Child Poverty Commission estimates that one in every eight children across the region are growing up in a household affected by the policy and that the two-child limit is leaving families struggling in poverty.

Its director, Amanda Bailey, said: "What’s clear is that the areas that are worst impacted by the policy are the areas that have some of the worst child poverty rates in the UK."

The Cedarwood Trust supports about 100 families a month in North Tyneside.

Wayne Dobson, the charity's CEO, said the policy was unfair and questioned why one child should be valued more than another.

Wayne Dobson, of the Cedarwood Trust, said the policy was unfair

He said: "Does that mean that those children [who do not receive benefits] don’t eat properly for a week?

"This limit is just another one of those elements that doesn’t make life any easier."

According to new research published by children's charity Barnados, a quarter of parents in the North East said they struggled to provide sufficient food for their children over the past 12 months.

They blamed the current cost-of-living situation with the charity pointing its finger at the two-child limit as one of the contributing causes.

'Not a choice'

Anti-poverty campaigners are not the only ones to be critical.

Natalie Collins, from Sunderland, is the CEO of Own My Life, which works with victims of domestic abuse.

She said the policy was "inhumane" and left some of the most vulnerable women in society in real danger.

"The two-child limit assumes that all women make active choices about how many children they have which is particularly dangerous for women who have an abusive partner," she said.

Natalie Collins works with victims of domestic abuse

She said those women may be forced to have more children by their partner and would find it harder to leave, knowing they will not get benefits for all children.

She added: "This policy is not taking into account the reality of the most vulnerable in society."

Black hole

Shortly after coming to power in July, almost all Labour MPs voted against a motion to remove the policy.

The party insisted it would be too much of a financial risk.

Ferguson, a Labour MP, said: "We were elected on a platform of stable, sensible, careful management of the economy.

"That does mean that we can't always do everything that we might want to do."

The new government has said it is committed to having a national child poverty strategy that will be "bold and ambitious" and will work across government departments.

But Labour is coming under increasing pressure – including from some of its own backbenchers - to scrap the two-child benefit cap policy.