No child should be priced out of a fair start

This week’s Cost of a Child 2025 report from the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) makes for grim but essential reading. It confirms what is already clear to us in Blackpool – families are being priced out of a basic standard of living and government policy is making it worse.

According to CPAG, the cost of raising a child has now reached £250,000 for a couple and £290,000 for a lone parent. What’s even more shocking is how far families are falling behind. An out-of-work couple with two children can now afford to cover just 37% of their basic costs. Even parents working full-time on the minimum wage are struggling to make ends meet.

This isn’t because parents have suddenly become less responsible or because the cost of essentials has mysteriously exploded on its own. It’s because of political choices made by previous governments that have chipped away at our social safety net over the past 15 years.

The report is clear that the Tory-imposed two-child benefit limit is one of the biggest drivers of hardship. The cost of a third child is no different to the cost of a second but our system refuses to recognise them equally. This arbitrary and ideological rule penalises larger families, traps children in poverty and deepens inequality from birth.

It’s a policy that punishes children for the size of the families they were born into. It offends the basic principles of fairness and decency that should underpin our welfare state. No child should be treated as one too many.

I will continue to make the case for scrapping the two-child limit in the forthcoming Child Poverty Strategy loud and clear. It’s the single most effective step we can take to lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.

But we can’t stop there. We need to abolish the benefit cap and reinvest in children’s benefits, restoring the real value of support that’s been eroded by years of freezes and below-inflation increases. The CPAG report shows that even working families on the median wage can no longer afford a minimum acceptable standard of living.

Child poverty isn’t inevitable. It’s a consequence of policy and that means it can be changed with political will too. The cost of inaction is measured not just in pounds, but in children’s life chances.

I’ve met too many parents doing everything they can for their families – working hard, budgeting carefully and even going without themselves – who are still unable to give their kids what they need. They deserve better. Their children deserve better and if we are serious about building a Britain that works for everyone and building a better Blackpool, then scrapping the two-child limit must be where we start.