Southport’s newly-elected MP Patrick Hurley has said that action on reducing child poverty “will take time”, after he was criticised for voting against a motion to scrap the two-child benefit cap.
Patrick Hurley joined with Labour colleagues in the House of Commons on Tuesday in voting down an SNP motion, designed to test the new government, that called for the policy to be scrapped.
While Child Benefit is offered to one parent of any child under 16, for an unlimited number of children, further tax benefits such as Universal Credit are not offered beyond the first two children.
Following the vote, Patrick Hurley posted on social media: “I am deeply committed to working with the Labour government to address child poverty and improve the life chances of children living in poverty.
“The last Labour government took over half a million children out of poverty – and lifted millions of children out of absolute poverty overall. In contrast, under the Conservatives, the number of children in poverty has risen by 700,000 – with over four million children now growing up in a low-income family.
“We’ll be turning the tables on this, but it will take time.
“It’s going to take us time to fix the foundations of our country’s wrecked economy before we can do all the things we want to do.”
Ahead of the vote Southport’s Liberal Democrats called on Labour to remove the cap.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has previously said the government will look to remove the cap in the future, but the measure was not currently affordable. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates scrapping the benefit cap would cost £3.4bn. Chancellor Rachel Reeves told the BBC this week she believed the actual figure would be much higher.
Sefton’s councillors have previously voted in favour of a motion in 2023 that called the two-child benefit cap: “economically misguided, societally damaging, and immoral”. The vote was not recorded, but passed at the time with support from Labour councillors.
Lib Dem Cllr Gareth Lloyd-Johnson who moved the council motion, commented: “‘It is clear from the support this motion received in council last year that the vast majority of Labour Sefton councillors believe that the two-child cap is wrong. I hope that they will put pressure on their party and new Southport MP to scrap this two-child cap.”
Erin Harvey, Southport Lib Dem Parliamentary spokesperson, added: “It’s clear the two-child cap brought in by the Tories is causing many families with children to suffer, potentially driving many to foodbanks. A reversal of this could be done quickly and it would be the cheapest and easiest way to help lift these families out of poverty.”
Conservative Group Leader on Sefton Council, Mike Prendergast, said that those calling to scrap the benefit cap need to be clear on how it will be paid for.
Councillor Prendergast said, “We all want to see children lifted out of poverty but you cannot tax poverty away or raise living standards by taking more of the money that people earn off them.
“The way to tackle child poverty and improve living standards is to grow our economy and create more of the high-paying high skilled jobs that we need in our local area.
“The estimated £3 billion cost of the measure, if it went ahead, would fall on the shoulders of hard-working people across the country, including people and businesses here in Southport.
Independent councillor Sean Halsall told OTS News: “It is abhorrent to me that anyone that would claim to be a socialist would fail at the first opportunity to lift so many children out of poverty. You don’t have to be a socialist to make a political choice that would benefit so many families here. We see a third of our children here in Southport trapped in poverty, through no fault of their own going to school hungry. Unable to enjoy things working-class kids from generations before took for granted.
“I feel now vindicated in my decision to leave the Labour Party. I would be embarrassed to give political cover to protecting a party that puts factional internal fighting ahead of addressing the country’s needs. If I had been elected, I would have been putting the children of Southport ahead of the wishes of Keir Starmer.”
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