Dear Chancellor,
We write to you from across the UK, on behalf of our churches of many denominations, to join the calls for you to use your upcoming Budget to end the two-child limit in social security systems.
It should be a universal national aspiration that all children in the UK have the best chances our country can provide. This should be a country that creates opportunities, which believes in and pursues progress, and which does all it can to enable children to flourish and pursue their dreams.
Towards that end, the UK’s shared social security system should be just and effective. Yet, right now, the two-child limit is instead creating a great injustice. It is, in reality, a sibling penalty. It punishes children for the fact that they happen to have more than one brother or sister. Something that should be a joy - sibling companionship - is instead held against children, denying them access to the opportunities, security and basic sustenance that all children deserve and need.
The Government’s own statistics show that 1.6 million children in 440,000 households are affected, with families missing out on up to £3,455 a year. There is widespread consensus that ending this policy would be the single most effective step the Government could take towards ending poverty, immediately freeing 300,000 children from poverty.
The policy has proven futile, failing to achieve even its stated aims from 2017. That was clear in a Work and Pensions Committee report as early as 2019. But above all, the policy is quite simply unjust and unjustifiable. No child should be actively held back by the Government, and left worse off than their peers, simply because of how many brothers and sisters they have. We urge you, in this month’s Budget, to end this policy, and in doing so to start laying the road to a future that all families can look forward to with hope.
Yours sincerely...