Labour MP Tom Hayes writes for The Mirror about the importance of scrapping the two-child benefit limit – saying it undoes ‘the uncaring right-wing politics of my childhood’
When I speak about child poverty, I’m not talking in abstract terms.
I’m thinking about my mum. About the quiet guilt she still carries. About how poverty seeps into how you see yourself, not just how you live.
I think about the messages she sends while watching me speak about poverty in Parliament- the apologies she offers, as if any of it were her fault, when in truth the blame belongs to the uncaring right-wing politics of my childhood.
That’s what Conservatives and Reform don’t understand. Poverty isn’t just about what’s in your bank account. It’s about the shame, the stigma, and the sense that you’re somehow to blame. It stays with you forever.
And for years, government policy made that worse. The two-child limit didn’t just cut support. It sent a message. That some children count less. That some families are on their own.
READ MORE: Top Tory blasted for flogging tickets to constituents who want to meet himREAD MORE: Female teachers face sickening misogyny as ‘manosphere’ creates ‘ticking time bomb’
From today, that changes. Labour’s decision to scrap the limit will lift nearly half a million children out of poverty. 3,000 kids in Bournemouth will be taken out of poverty. Most of them are in working families. Parents doing exactly what they’re told is the right thing, but still being held back by a system that wasn’t built for them.
This is what real action on the cost of living looks like. Not gestures. Not rhetoric. But decisions that put money back into people’s pockets and give children a fair start.
And it’s part of a wider shift. Higher wages. Lower bills. More support with the essentials families rely on.
But let’s be clear: this progress is under threat. The Conservatives and Reform have made it plain they would bring the two-child limit back. Their plans amount to a cruel child poverty pact that would push hundreds of thousands of children straight back into hardship.
At a time when families are already stretched, they are choosing to make working people worse off.
And they’re doing it with the same tired language we’ve heard before. The insinuation that if you’re struggling, it’s your fault. That support should be rationed based on who politicians think is “deserving”.
I know where that leads. I’ve lived it. It leads to parents blaming themselves for circumstances beyond their control. It leads to children growing up with fewer opportunities, carrying that weight into adulthood.
We should have learned that lesson by now. Ending the two-child limit is a line in the sand. A decision to tackle child poverty, not entrench it. To back families, not judge them.
Because no child chooses the circumstances they’re born into. But politicians do choose what kind of country they build.
And this Labour government knows what side it’s on.