It breaks my heart to be writing this under a Labour government. As a former leader of Newcastle City Council, I didn’t wait around when it became clear that poverty in our city was deepening. My predecessor had spoken passionately in the council chamber about the blight of child poverty – year after year. But each year, the rate continued to rise. The words may have been heartfelt, but the lack of action changed nothing. I wasn’t interested in handwringing. We made tackling child poverty a priority and introduced the city’s first anti-poverty strategy – not because it was easy, but because it was urgent. Leadership demands action, not just empathy.
Now, after more than a year into office, I am watching the Labour government stand by as the most punitive welfare policy of the last decade continues to punish children across our region – with no timeline for change, no clear commitment, and no sense of urgency.
Moral failure
This is not just a political disappointment. It is a moral failure, and its consequences are being borne most harshly by the North East.
Listening to Gordon Brown on Radio 4 talking about child poverty in the UK today makes this disappointment even more real – hearing the passion, the conviction, and the moral compass, everything missing from today’s leadership.
A result of this government’s failure to act is that “a million children will be trying to sleep tonight without a bed of their own, two million children are in homes that don’t have a cooker or a fridge and certainly not a washing machine … three million children are skipping meals.”
The two-child limit
The two-child limit – introduced in 2017 – restricts Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit support to a family’s first two children. The policy was intended as a deterrent, rooted in ideology, not evidence. It has done nothing to reduce child poverty. In fact, it has entrenched and expanded it.
According to figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions on 10 July 2025 and analysed by the North East Child Poverty Commission (NECPC), almost 70,000 children across the North East are now affected by this policy. That includes:
• 2,450 families in Newcastle with 8,670 children
• Over 21,000 children in nearly 6,000 families across the Tees Valley
• 13,600 families and 48,130 children in the North East Combined Authority area
These are not families “choosing not to work” or “gaming the system” – myths too often repeated to justify inaction. The NECPC’s analysis shows:
• 52% of affected households are in work
• 59% are single-parent families, most led by women
• 47% include someone with a disability or health condition
• 68% have a youngest child under five
This is a policy hitting the working poor, disabled people, mothers, and the youngest children. It is a policy that hits women hardest – and when you impoverish women, you impoverish children. The link between gender poverty and child poverty is not incidental; it is structural, generational, and inescapable.
More than half of all households affected by the two-child limit are headed by single mothers. These are women who are already navigating low pay, insecure work, caring responsibilities, and often the fallout from domestic abuse. They are the backbone of many families and communities, and yet they are being punished – and their children made to suffer – by a system that ignores the realities of their lives.
For a small number of women – 170 in the North East alone – support for a third child has only been accessible after formally disclosing they were raped. Let that sink in. A benefit policy so cruel, it requires women to relive trauma in order to feed their children.
There is no moral defence of this policy. There is no economic rationale. And there is no excuse for Labour not to act.
Scrapping the two-child limit
The case has been made repeatedly that scrapping the two-child limit is the single most effective action the government could take to reduce child poverty in the UK.
The latest national figures show that:
• 350,000 children would be lifted out of poverty overnight
• A further 700,000 children would experience less severe poverty
Every day this policy remains 109 more children are pulled into poverty across the UK. At this rate, its damaging legacy will continue to grow until at least 2035, when the first children born under the policy turn 18.
Yet this government – elected on a platform of “change” – has not acted. Let’s not forget what Labour was elected on – “to change lives”. The Labour Party campaigned on a slogan of “Change”, and it resonated with millions of people – especially in regions like ours that have long been ignored and left behind.
Within weeks of taking office, the Prime Minister announced a new ministerial taskforce to develop a national child poverty strategy. It was supposed to be published by spring 2025. That deadline has slipped. We are now told to wait until autumn.
We do not need a 100-page document to do what is obvious and overdue. The first and most transformative act of that strategy should have been to scrap the two-child limit immediately. There is nothing stopping the government from acting now and building the rest of its strategy around that foundation.
And yet – nothing. We do not have a government focused on the blight of child poverty. We have a government obsessed with shadow boxing Reform UK, driven more by fear of its political opponents than loyalty to its founding values.
And this is where the greatest sadness lies. Labour was created to fight for working people. For vulnerable families. For children who start with the least. Yet now, it is overseeing a policy that entrenches inequality and deepens suffering for the country’s poorest.
It is also overseeing a system that continues to push women and children into poverty – ensuring that gender inequality and child poverty remain locked together in a cycle that should shame us all.
Silence matters
And here, we must also be honest about what hasn’t been said. Despite repeated announcements, press conferences, and strategy documents, no Labour representative has made the case and emphasised this critical link between gender poverty and child poverty.
That silence matters. In a region where many families affected by the two-child limit are headed by women, where child poverty is highest in the country, and where we are trying to build a future rooted in fairness – this oversight is more than disappointing.
It is a missed opportunity for leadership. And it reinforces a pattern: women’s economic hardship is too often seen as secondary, invisible, or merely incidental to poverty debates. It isn’t. It is central. If we want to end child poverty, we must start by ending women’s poverty.
It is a betrayal – not just of Labour’s platform, but of its purpose.
Child poverty is not an abstract concept here. The North East has the highest child poverty rates in the country. We live with the consequences of decisions made in Whitehall every single day.
The North East Child Poverty Commission and campaigners across the region have been clear, consistent, and evidence-led in their call to end this policy. As their Chair, Beth Farhat, rightly said:
“It is hard to know what further evidence is required to make this decision.”
She’s right. There is no child poverty strategy worth the paper it’s printed on if it does not start with the removal of the two-child limit.
So let me ask, plainly: what is this government waiting for?
The case is made. The numbers are clear. The moral imperative is overwhelming.
And yet, the Labour government has chosen – yes, chosen – to wait.
How is it even conceivable that one of its first actions in office was not to scrap the two-child limit? What are we saying to families hanging on week to week? To the children we pledged to protect? To the women carrying the burden of austerity? To the voters who believed Labour would be different?
If Labour does not act now, it cannot call itself a party of fairness or opportunity. If it does not start with this change, it cannot claim to be serious about ending poverty. And if it continues to sideline the gendered realities of poverty, it will fail a generation of children and women together.
I urge Ministers – and Labour MPs across the country – to find their courage. Honour your mandate. Remember your roots. And do what any decent government should already have done:
Scrap the two-child limit. Do it now. Not next year. Not after another consultation. Now.
Because every day you don’t, more children are pushed into poverty. More women are left struggling. And more people in the North East ask the same question:
What was all that talk of change really for?
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