Nigel Farage backs lifting two-child profit cap

Nigel Farage piled pressure on the Tories and Labour tonight as he surprisingly backed the lifting of the two-child benefit cap.

The Reform UK leader told an ITV general election debate that ‘we should encourage people to have children’, while he backed greater tax relief for married couples.

This evening’s seven-way debate also saw renewed clashes between Conservative minister Penny Mordaunt and Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner over tax.

Ms Mordaunt pointed to a £38.5billion ‘black hole’ in Labour’s general election manifesto.

The House of Commons Leader warned Labour have only declared a quarter of the taxes they will have to put up if they win power on 4 July.

But Ms Rayner shot back at Tory manifesto plans for a £17billion package of tax cuts.

‘We can’t afford five more years of the Tories,’ she told Ms Mordaunt.

‘You’re promising tax cuts when you’ve already tried it once and crashed the economy.’

The ITV debate kicked-off shortly after Reform were shown to have overtaken the Tories in an opinion poll for the first time – with Mr Farage hailing an ‘inflection point’ in British politics.

A YouGov survey for The Times put Reform up two points to 19 per cent, with the Tories unchanged on 18 per cent.

The symbolic moment of Reform moving ahead of the Conservatives is another shattering blow to PM Rishi Sunak with just three weeks until the general election.

The poll showed Labour with an 18-point lead, with Sir Keir Starmer‘s party backed by 37 per cent of voters.

The Liberal Democrats were four points behind the Tories on 14 per cent.

Ms Mordaunt used tonight’s ITV debate to brand Mr Farage a ‘Labour enabler’ as she continued to push Tory claims that voting for Reform makes it easier for Sir Keir to become PM.

But Mr Farage replied: ‘As for being the Labour enabler, we are now ahead of you in the national polls. A vote for you is actually now a vote for Labour.’ 

The two-child benefit cap prevents parents from claiming universal credit or child tax credit for a third or additional child born after April 2017.

Charities have called for the abolition of the cap and pointed to record levels of child poverty in the UK.

But both Mr Sunak and Sir Keir have said they will keep the cap in place after the general election.

Mr Farage was challenged by debate host Julie Etchingham about his own stance on the cap.

She noted how Tory former home secretary Suella Braverman last month broke ranks with the PM to call for it to be abolished.

Asked if he agreed with Mrs Braverman, Mr Farage said: ‘I think we should encourage people to have families.

‘I think we should encourage people to have children. I think we should also encourage people in marriage to have some tax benefits as well.

‘We’ve got to help people.’ 

Earlier, the Reform leader warned the NHS ‘isn’t working’ and suggested Britain copy France’s health system. 

‘We need to look at countries like France, who spend exactly the same sum of money, but get far better services, by people paying into an insurance fund,’ he said.

‘Those that can’t pay don’t. They get better results. Let’s think more broadly.’

Mr Farage, in part, blamed the UK’s ‘exploding population’ for pressures on the NHS. 

The senior politicians engaged in a second live on-air bout, six days after they engaged in heated exchanges in a previous seven-way BBC debate.

Also appearing were the Liberal Democrat‘s Daisy Cooper, SNP‘s Stephen Flynn, Green Party’s Carla Denyer, and Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth.

This evening’s debate saw clashes over immigration, with Ms Rayner saying: ‘What we need at the moment is a skills strategy.

‘We have not had an industrial and skills strategy, so what we have is we’ve been over-reliant in our economy from overseas workers to fill our skills gap.

‘And they’ve done a tremendous job in doing that and we have needed that, but what we really need is, as employment levels have gone higher again, is we need to really match those skills to give people opportunity to take those jobs.’

Mr Farage said: ‘Well, it’s funny Angela Rayner says that because Labour today launched their six key priorities at the general election and didn’t mention the single most important issue affecting the lives of everybody in this country, namely the population explosion caused directly by migration.’

Plaid Cymru’s leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said: ‘We need to heed and listen to people who have genuine concerns about the impact of the movement of population, pressures on public services.

‘But we have to put that in the context of public spending cuts by the Conservatives.’

He accused Mr Farage of having been on ‘a dogwhistle tour of the UK for many, many years and exploiting the anxiety that people have’.

Ms Mordaunt was laughed at by the ITV audience when she described the UK’s education system as ‘world class’.

Host Julie Etchingham said ITV had received messages from hundreds of teachers saying schools are in crisis while one 12-year-old had written in about his crumbling school building.

‘Be honest, do you think our education system is still world class?’ the host asked.

Ms Mordaunt said: ‘I think it is world class and we have improved.’

To laughter, she added: ‘Well, when we took office literacy rates were trailing the world, now they are leading them.

‘We have 90% of our schools are good or outstanding and we have undertaken an enormous refurbishment programme.’

Mr Farage has agreed with Mr Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, that the Westminster electoral system is ‘broken’.

Mr Flynn said: ‘The Westminster system – the way it operates – is broken. It’s been built on failure, Brexit being the most obvious one of recent times.

‘Hold your politicians to high standards and vote for what you believe in.’

Mr Farage said: ‘I do agree. The first-past-the-post system has led to the two big parties – well, one was big, not after today’s polls, but there we are – they’re both mushy, sort-of SDP parties in the middle.

‘I would change the voting system. I think the House of Lords is an abomination, the fact that it’s filled up with party donors is a complete disgrace. There must be an elected element.

‘And finally, let’s give the people the ability to call more referendums so they can decide the biggest issue of their lives.’

Replying, Mr Flynn said: ‘I was just surprised that Nigel Farage wants another referendum on Scottish independence. I’m sure there’s a lot of folk back in Scotland who’d be… keen to see that happen.’

Mr Farage quipped: ‘Oh come on, you don’t want to lose again, do you?’

Ms Cooper challenged Ms Mordaunt’s claims about tax, saying: ‘Penny Mordaunt has said the Conservatives haven’t put tax up but really?

‘I mean of course they’ve put tax up. They have frozen the personal allowance (so) people were dragged into paying a higher rate of tax – that’s an invisible tax increase by the Conservatives.

‘But the fact is the cost of living crisis has been made so much worse by the mini-budget which blew a hole in the public finances and made people’s rent and mortgages go absolutely sky high and people have felt that and they are still trying to recover now.’