Where is your outrage about the two-child limit?

At 5.19am on July 5, as the sun rose on the first day of our new government, I wiped away tears and wrote on X: “I’m thrilled the Tories are gone. And I am heartbroken for the 670,000 children who will be affected by the two-child limit by the end of the next Parliament.” For the first time in my life, I had not voted for Labor, outraged by their insistence on it Maintaining the sadistic, right-wing social welfare cap.

Ninety-five days after my anticipated grief, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) released a new analysis showing that 10,000 children have been forced into poverty by the two-child limit since the election. The poverty-inducing policy continues to do what it was designed to do: push families into poverty by withholding up to £3,455 a year from the third child onwards.

This is a tried-and-tested means of forcing poor families to have fewer children – and, unsurprisingly, it proves economically disastrous for low-income people, while for those on the verge of great hardship. is a kick in the ass. How the 10,000 children who were not living in poverty when Keir Starmer entered Downing Street but have since been pushed into the abyss by a party that claims to believe in social and economic equality.

The truth is that these 10,000 children did not have to fall into poverty, and neither will the 10,000 who will follow them in the next three months. It was and is preventable. It is a political decision and one that the government makes every day to maintain the two-child limit.

But there’s an even more brutal truth: no one really cares. Do you? Not based on this week’s reaction to the shameful number: not a single newspaper front page was splashed on it. The story did not lead a radio show or newscast. From what I saw, it wasn’t trending on social media.

It seems like the number 10,000 isn’t enough to shock us, to shock you. So how about 109? According to CPAG, so many children are pushed into poverty every day because of politics. What about 4.3 million? According to the government, there are so many children living in poverty in the UK. NO? So three million? That’s the number of children in the UK suffering from “hardship and hunger” (a figure that is “well below” the poverty line), according to new research from Trussell, the charity and food bank network. Still nothing?

In the days following the election, those of us calling for immediate action on child poverty were told to “be patient”; then again after the King’s Speech; then again after reports that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was “preparing” to maintain the two-child limit in the October 30 Budget; and now – once again with compassion for everyone! – after the child poverty taskforce set up by this government announced that a strategy for its “urgent” work will be published in spring 2025 (does anyone need a dictionary for Christmas? “urgent”) falls under “u”, as does “unscrupulous” ).

Be patient. These two words, a demand from those who have nothing to do with it, are guaranteed to provoke my anger. From people who choose not to see or who don’t care about what I already know. That condemning children to live another hour, another day of poverty is inhumane, cruel and a breathtaking moral failure. I know because I spent my early years in poverty, a poverty in which I climbed into the bin at a chip shop and ate out of it (more than once, apparently), that left my single mother with no choice forced to make “choices” that left that scar on me still (especially the predators I was left with when she worked nights as a barmaid, meager and with no childcare).

I know the destruction of humanity, of budding personality and self-esteem that comes from living in poverty. The knowledge that you are not important enough to be helped or saved, that you are not only worth less, but worth nothing at all. You can’t tell me that’s not the core of our apathy. Even though the damage that poverty does to children’s bodies, brains and hearts, to their socialization, education and future prospects is becoming clear again and again.

What exactly are we waiting for? What does it take to ignite the fire of outrage within us? What will make us so important that we demand an end to one of the cruelest policies of modern times, aimed at punishing and hurting children and their parents? Abolition is supported by most experts and all major children’s charities; It has long been the advice to the government as it was a government-in-waiting.

As the single largest cause of child poverty, maintaining the two-child limit will ensure that all other interventions – whether part of a medium or long-term strategy, both crucial – are reversed. Not only will poverty rates not go down, these policies will ensure they grow.

No, neither the children who are currently suffering nor those who are on the edge of the cliff can wait another day for the two-child limit to be lifted. They can’t afford it. Why am I so sure? One final number: three. Child mortality rates are many times higher in the most deprived areas of England.

Poverty kills. It’s killing our children. It’s killing our babies. And if that doesn’t move you and Keir Starmer’s government, my heart will break again.