Reform had promised to scrap the two-child benefit limit, but Farage says his party will now vote against lifting it
Reform UK has made a major U-turn on its policy on the two-child benefit limit, which Labour has announced it will scrap.
Despite the party committing to abolishing the policy, Nigel Farage told journalists that Reform’s five MPs will now vote against Labour’s bill to lift the limit.
The two-child limit prevents families from claiming Universal Credit and housing benefit for more than two children.
It is estimated that lifting the limit, which was introduced by the Tories in 2017, will lift 450,000 children out of poverty by 2029. Labour will lift the limit by April this year.
In May last year, Farage said that Reform would abolish the limit, to make it easier for lower-paid workers to have children.
He said that removing the limit “is the right thing to do”.
In November, the Reform leader said: “We should remove the two-child cap for British working couples”, noting that “for lower-paid couples who are both working, the costs of childcare are exorbitant”.
Responding to Reform UK’s U-turn, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Paul Nowak, said: “70% of the kids who live in poverty have at least one parent who goes out to work.
“Lifting the two child cap will take hundreds of thousands of those kids out of poverty and directly support working parents.
“Reform don’t care about working class kids or their families.”
In a post on X, Evolve Politics: “It is current Reform policy to abolish the two child benefit cap. Yet Nigel Farage has just confirmed that he and his MPs will vote AGAINST abolishing the two child benefit cap.”
Andrew Fisher, a former executive director of policy for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, said: “Farage is a fraud.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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