Debate contribution: Universal Credit: Remove the Two-child Limit

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 16 April 2024.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

16 April 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Universal Credit: Remove the Two-child Limit

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4483249

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. When we entered opposition in February and in the weeks since, we have consistently said that we want to be a constructive Opposition. Recognising the scale and long-term nature of the challenges facing the Executive, we seek to offer constructive accountability and solutions as well as robust challenge when necessary. We also want to use our platform as an Opposition to give a voice to people who have been failed by our politics. As a party with its roots in social justice campaigning, the SDLP is determined to use our Opposition platform to address the moral shame and blight of poverty. Before I go on, I thank the Cliff Edge Coalition, its members and, indeed, all the campaign groups that have come to Parliament Buildings today to make their voice heard in support of our Opposition day and our motions.

Poverty levels in this society remain far too high, unconscionably so. That is most acutely the case with child poverty. A Northern Ireland Audit Office report recently found that one in five children in our society lives in poverty. Those statistics mask the reality of empty tummies and anxious children and parents. This is not solely a local phenomenon. Across the UK and further afield, the effects of more than a decade of austerity have combined with a post-pandemic spike in inflation to create a perfect storm of rising costs and suppressed incomes for the most vulnerable. However, while successive Tory Governments and their austerity agenda have squeezed welfare spending, without regard for the human consequences of doing so, it is wrong to imply, as some in the Chamber have done, that little can be done to alleviate or mitigate the pernicious effects of those policies. Indeed, different parties in the Chamber have, at some points, wanted to give the Tories even more power to inflict harmful policies on the North, either by allowing them the power to legislate for welfare reform directly in Northern Ireland, allowing local hands to be washed clean of responsibility, or by boycotting ministerial office, as both main parties have done, so that the only people to take decisions for this region were those same Tory Ministers. I note with some regret that although the Opposition is the smallest of the five main parties represented in the Chamber, we still have more MLAs in the Chamber now than the two main parties combined, which have nearly 60 MLAs between them. They may not want to give the Opposition day much credence but it would do them some credit if they gave the issue of poverty a little more respect instead of having such a paltry turnout.

As always, my colleague puts his case forcefully. There is an argument to be made there. However, we have a choice. Although we will make political points, I want to build some consensus on this issue in the Chamber. I also recognise that we are making the Communities Minister sit in the Chamber for an awful lot of today, as we did yesterday. I hope that we can make some progress in the debate. As I said, we have a choice. Despite the political difficulties involved in getting there, Northern Ireland introduced a package of welfare mitigations that has, most experts acknowledge, mitigated some of the worst of austerity, though sadly not all of it. We have a clear template for how, when we turn up, do our jobs and make serious choices, we can improve the lives of people we serve. Therefore, the first item in our Opposition day package is a call on the Executive to remove the pernicious two-child limit on universal credit. That policy, introduced by the Tories in 2015, is an indefensible and direct punishment of children. Our former leader John Hume often talked about the accident of birth in relation to identity. Of course, that accident of birth also applies to the family that a child is born into and, indeed, the order of their birth, but the effect of the two-child limit is to remove any additional support from that child if they are the third or subsequent birth, regardless of the objective need of the family. Of course, in Northern Ireland, the impact is disproportionately felt because of our larger family sizes. It is also important to note that the policy affects working families too. The majority of households affected by the two-child limit are working families. The scale of the real loss to families is huge: a lower-income family in receipt of the child element of universal credit loses £3,200 per year for every third or subsequent child born after April 2017. The numbers of affected children is increasing year-on-year, making the effect of the policy evermore damaging. Of course, as the Resolution Foundation has pointed out, that is precisely the point of the policy. A wide range of experts who have looked at this issue agree that the removal of the two-child limit from universal credit would be a hugely impactful and direct way of addressing child poverty. The review of welfare mitigations — created by the previous Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey and led by Les Allamby — found that virtually all the local stakeholders and campaigners that it engaged with highlighted the two-child limit as being a particular blight. Listening to the debate yesterday, and the various arguments that were made for watering down the SDLP's call for specific timelines and a rigorous ring-fenced budget for child poverty, one could have been left with the impression that the making of an anti-poverty strategy was as mysterious as the third secret of Fatima or as impenetrable as the text of 'Finnegans Wake'. It was as if there was nothing we could do. While poverty, including child poverty, is multifaceted and touches on virtually every aspect of public policy, there are clear and deliverable interventions that we have the power to implement, which would make a real difference to people's lives. If we were to undo the effects of the two-child limit via policy, we would make the lives of many children and families better, raise many out of poverty and improve their life chances. That is hardly a bad use of the power that we have. We think that it would be a good day's work. How much would it cost, and how would or should it be paid for? The Department's welfare mitigations panel consulted two different economic consultancies that costed ending the two-child limit in Northern Ireland at about £40 million a year. That is a significant recurring cost, but it is not insurmountable. Indeed, the Executive have already raised the vast majority of it — they have raised £30 million — via an increase in the regional rate. That funding could be directed towards paying for removing the two-child limit. There are other options that the Executive could look at, such as reforming the long-term generosity of the vacant property relief in the rates system. It is, of course, entirely right that we have a relief for vacant property, but our relief is particularly generous when compared with that across the water or over the border. Those are not definitive decisions, because they are not ours to make, but they are an example of what the Executive could look at to pay for the policy. We also subsidise non-existent long-haul flights from Belfast by paying the Treasury more than £2 million a year in hypothetically forgone air tax, despite there not being any long-haul flights from Northern Ireland. Taken together, those measures could offer the means to pay for an essential intervention in our welfare system, end the pernicious two-child limit and start lifting children out of poverty. Of course, if Members from Executive parties wish to challenge or disagree with those suggested choices or options, they are more than welcome to tell us which choices they would be willing to make to pay for policies. As yet, we have seen precious little of that detail from the Executive parties amid more than a dozen motions promising action. Indeed, we may be the first party to propose a motion with a detailed explanation of how a measure could be paid for. It is ironic for an Opposition party to do that work. Of course, the long-term cost of child poverty, be it through adult welfare, healthcare costs or, tragically, in the criminal justice system, far outweighs the cost of the intervention that we are proposing. Let me be clear on this: we regard a proposal for full mitigation of the two-child limit via a separate payment as being entirely consistent with the ask in the motion. Our preference would be for abolition, but we are not theological, so I hope that we can avoid turning the debate into a theological debate about the technicalities of mitigation versus abolition. If mitigation covered the total cost of the two-child limit, we would be up for that. We would prefer abolition, but, ultimately, what matters is the financial outcome for families, not the precise bureaucratic mechanism. Let me touch briefly on the DUP amendment, which, I am afraid, we cannot support. Like the Alliance amendment yesterday, it seeks to water down the specificity of the motion and the policy commitment that we are asking for. It simply asks that the Minister "consider the merits" of the recommendations of the Allamby mitigations panel. To be honest, I had hoped and assumed that the Minister would do that as a bare minimum without the need for Assembly instruction. I am afraid that the amendment would render our motion wholly inadequate, so we cannot support it. I do not go in for grandiose quotes, but there is a Franklin Roosevelt quote that always resonates with me, and it is —.

I do not actually, but this quote resonates with me. Roosevelt said:

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

There is no more important thing to do in politics or in public life than improve the life chances of those who are in need. With the motion, which proposes something that is not only transformative but affordable and practical, we all have that opportunity. Let us take that opportunity. I commend to the Assembly the motion to remove the two-child limit.

1,743 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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