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Keir Starmer said he was “not immune” to the powerful argument to scrap the two-child benefit cap after experts warned the number of children affected by it would rise by a third over the next five years.
The Labor leader refused to give a timetable for when he would scrap the policy, although he has previously said he would abandon it if he could.
“I’m not going to put a date on these things, but I’m not immune to how strong an argument that is,” Starmer said.
The policy introduced by George Osborne when he was chancellor, means low-income parents are denied key benefits, including universal credit, for their third and all subsequent children born after April 2017.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has warned that a further 250,000 children will be affected by the cap when it is fully introduced, and this is expected to rise to 670,000 before the end of the next Parliament if the policy is not reformed. The two-child benefit limit currently affects 2 million children.
Starmer accused chancellor Jeremy Hunt of admitting that the Tories’ manifesto promises were “completely unfunded” and cited this as the reason many people are still living in poverty.
The Labor leader told reporters in Southampton docks: “By saying that the money they pretended was there to fund their manifesto is actually money that’s already been accounted for … that’s the problem and that’s having an impact on poverty, because once you lose control of the economy, then working people and children pay the price.”
Senior Labor figures have called on Starmer to scrap the cap on two-child benefits. Starmer said it was a “difficult decision” but one Labor had to make because of the damage Liz Truss had done to the economy. “It would be much worse if someone repeated the mistakes of the Liz Truss government,” he said.
He was speaking at the start of Labour’s “economy” week, during which they hope to highlight their proposals to boost investment and contrast them with the Tories’ “underfunded” manifesto plans.
The Tories have set out plans for billions in tax cuts, which they say will be paid for by £12bn of welfare savings.
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Starmer also attacked Tory ministers for calling on Rishi Sunak to “go for the jugular” and make more direct personal attacks on him.
The Labor leader said: “This is all they have left after 14 desperate years. You get to the final weeks and the only thing left for them to do is attack me personally, I think that says it all.
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