Voters again serving to households with insurance policies like scrapping two-child cap, ballot exhibits
The Save the Children and Unicef polling showed across a variety of issues, failing to tackle child poverty was the most likely to damage Labour’s re-election prospects
Tackling poverty through actions like scrapping the two-child limit could boost Labour at the next election, new polling has suggested.
Commissioned by Save the Children and The UK Committee for UNICEF and conducted by Public First before the Budget, the poll surveyed people with a range of voter intentions.
It showed across a variety of issues, failing to tackle child poverty was the most likely to damage Labour’s re-election prospects.
READ MORE: Two-child benefit cap scrapped – see how your area will benefitREAD MORE: Two-child benefit cap axed in Rachel Reeves’ Budget – what it means for you
The Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced an end to the cruel cap on Wednesday, a Tory policy that impacted 1,665,540 children according to Government figures.
Polling showed the public support the decision, especially when shown the effectiveness of lifting the two-child limit together with the cost of doing so.
More than one in two people (55%) said they want the government to prioritise supporting families with children, the most popular answer across all voting intentions.
Other priorities to choose from included support for people in work but struggling with costs (32%) and people with disabilities (54%).
Meghan Meek-O’Connor, Head of England and Westminster at Save the Children UK, said: “This polling shows that when the public get more information about the two-child limit to benefits, they are in favour of it being scrapped, which is the action the UK Government correctly took at the Budget.
“Children deserve the best childhood, and should never be held back by the circumstances of their birth. Scrapping the two-child limit was the most cost-effective way of reducing child poverty by the end of the Parliament and we now eagerly await the publication
of the child poverty strategy.”
It comes as new analysis from the UNICEF Global Office of Research and Foresight found that the UK saw the largest increase in relative child income poverty of 37 high-income countries between 2013 and 2023 – an increase of 34%.
The UK also suffered the largest increase in deep poverty when compared to European Union (EU) countries between 2013 and 2023 – an increase of 67%.
