Andy Burnham pleads with Keir Starmer to scrap two-child benefit limit - 'no moral basis'

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham says there is 'no moral basis' for the two-child benefit limit policy to continue and should be axed by Keir Starmer to lift kids out of poverty

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Andy Burnham has pleaded with Keir Starmer to abolish the two-child benefit limit - arguing there is "no moral basis" for the policy to continue.

It comes as the government considers scrapping or watering down the Tory-era policy blamed for trapping hundreds of thousands of kids in poverty.

Mr Burnham, the Greater Manchester Mayor, and Steve Rotheram, the Liverpool City Region Mayor, said the government should adopt Gordon Brown's proposal. The former Labour Prime Minister suggested hiking gambling taxes at the Budget in order to raise billions to tackle sky-high levels of child poverty.

During an in conversation event with The Mirror's Real Britain columnist Ros-Wynne Jones, Mr Burnham pleaded: "Please - the party - remove the two-child cap on benefits. You will lift so many kids out of poverty, in London, Liverpool, in Manchester. And yeah if you need to, do it via either a gambling tax or a wealth tax. That speaks to what we should do."

Mr Burnham suggested it would lift some of the "demoralisation" in the party's ranks, adding: "There is no moral basis for its continuation." He also criticised the decision of Labour to strip the whip from seven MPs who voted against the party on the two-child benefit limit last summer.

He said: "That is not what I remember from the Labour government I was in under Brown and Blair - no one lost the whip for taking a principled stance like that."

Last week the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) concluded scrapping the policy, which restricts Child Tax Credits and Universal Credit to the first two children in a family, would lift 630,000 children out of poverty in the long-term. The government is expected to publish the findings of its child poverty review, which is considering the policy, later this year.

Liverpool City Region Mayor Mr Rotheram went on to say he was "jealous" of one policy ushered in by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. "That's the free school meals," he said. "I would bite your hands off to do that. It would cost us an arm and a leg because we don't have the ability to raise that additional revenue."

Mr Burnham also urged Labour to focus more on the cost-of-living crisis and lowering people's bills. He said: "Intervene to lower bills of all kinds. Lower fares on transport. You could do a major reform lowering people's council tax, maybe something in that space is coming in the Budget, I certainly hope so. Lower the cost of living for people. It's too high and people are struggling. They are making compromises across the board."