GORDON BROWN: Tories ought to hold their heads in disgrace after Benefits Street lies
Former PM Gordon Brown lambasts the Conservatives for peddling cruel myths about welfare scroungers – and shines a light on their record pushing children into poverty
Rachel Reeves’ Budget made history last week by lifting half a million children out of poverty.
To her great credit she has won the first round of the long battle against child deprivation. Ending the two child limit is the right policy but we need to deploy the right arguments to win the war of public opinion.
That means exposing this week’s Tory lie that abolition does not help children out of poverty, but simply subsidises the workshy, the indolent and the feckless parents on benefits
It was the omnishambles Tory Chancellor George Osborne who first claimed that unemployed mothers were having third and fourth children simply to get extra welfare cash.
Now Kemi Badenoch plans to run a nationwide campaign from here to the next election about what she calls ‘Benefits Street’ – telling hard pressed working families that their taxes are paying for ‘welfare scroungers’ to ‘game’ the social security system.
The picture they are painting is completely wrong. Untrue. They are peddling lies
READ MORE: OBR boss Richard Hughes quits after chaotic leak of Budget documentsREAD MORE: Rachel Reeves’ Budget helps ordinary families lifting 450,000 kids out of poverty
The majority – 60 per cent – of children affected by the rule have a parent in work. Another 15 per cent are under three and in single parent families where all too often the children are too young – or child care is too expensive – for the mother to work.
If any of the rest were to claim incapacity benefit, they lose £50 a week from April. If they are unemployed and qualify for help they face a benefit cap which limits total benefits, no matter how many children you have, to £423 a week including rent. Not the £40,000 a year the Tories claim.
For many larger families, the extra cash given with one hand by abolishing the two-child limit will be partly or wholly taken away with the other, as they come up against this benefit cap.
Indeed many families can gain more for their third or fourth child if they can get work earning £200 a week or more.
So the change represents an incentive for parents to get back to work quickly, making working families the big beneficiaries of the new policy. The Tories should be hanging their heads in shame.
For 14 years they increased the number of children living in poverty to 4.5million. Their record on poverty is why so many teenagers are ill-equipped for school and now make up the one million not in education, training or employment.
It’s to help young people get into work that to her credit Rachel Reeves has announced a new policy that will help those victims of Tory spending cuts – Austerity’s Children – to get their first job.
As Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have both said this week, they are on a moral mission to end poverty – and with more breakfast clubs, family hubs and free school meals promised in the forthcoming child poverty review, Britain is taking the next steps to build a future fit for every child.
