Contribution
I want to speak in favour of the Bill, and against amendment 1, as it is an attempt to gut the Bill and defeat its purpose entirely. There are moments in politics when the questions before us are not complicated, but simple, and when they are about dignity, compassion and the kind of country that we choose to be.
I will start with an important aspect of the Bill. Forcing women to disclose and prove rape in order to feed their child was one of the most cruel and indefensible features ever embedded in our welfare system. Scrapping that clause restores something fundamental: humanity. There have been, and there are, constituents in Portsmouth carrying trauma quietly, while still working, parenting and trying to hold their family together. They have needed and still need support, not interrogation. No mother should ever have to relive the worst moments of their life just to put food on the table. This requirement should never have been introduced in the first place, and it needs to go.
Alongside this injustice sits another harmful narrative: the suggestion that families affected by the two-child limit are somehow avoiding responsibility, and that just knocking out kids is a case of being lazy and going after money. The facts simply do not support this claim. Around 59% of affected households are already in work. They are nurses, teaching assistants, shopworkers, cleaners, carers—I could go on. In Portsmouth North, I meet parents finishing night shifts or juggling childcare, and parents who through tragedy, such as accidents, redundancy, relationship breakdown, illness or the death of a partner, find themselves in situations they did not start out in when planning their families. Many of them work additional jobs and still skip meals so their children do not have to eat less, only to be told that support stops because of an arbitrary rule. This is not fairness; it is hardship being locked in.
As the Child Poverty Action Group and many others make clear, child poverty damages health, education and long-term opportunities. These are not statistics; they are Portsmouth children with dreams, talents and futures that are—in my and this Government’s opinion—worth investing in. Removing the rape clause and ending the two-child limit says something powerful: dignity matters, work should be respected, and no child should be punished for the circumstances or the place in their family that they are born into.
As the Opposition mentioned the economic impact of the policy, I want to look at the economic picture. Inflation is falling, and the Bank of England expects inflation to get to the target quicker than expected. There have been six interest rate cuts since the election, which is the fastest rate of cuts in 17 years, taking an average of £1,400 off new mortgages. All that has happened without austerity and without making the most vulnerable in our society pay. In Portsmouth, the average mortgage has seen a reduction of £1,750, and £62 million has been provided for local services, such as roads, libraries and reviving high streets. That also includes 15,711 young people benefiting from youth investment. The national debt was cut last week, and we have the largest Budget surplus since records began—without austerity. Thanks to the choices we have made and Bills like this, the economic plan is the correct one, without putting our country’s and my city’s children into poverty. As my hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) noted, meeting the cost of tackling poverty at source, rather than paying 10 times more to support children in poverty throughout their lives, is not just morally but economically correct.
This is not just good social policy; it is the mark of a decent society and something I am proud to stand up for. I ask the Minister in his summing up to tell me more about the work the Government will do to monitor the impact of the changes and how they will work across Government in a joined-up, consistent way to improve outcomes for young people and families, such as on workers’ rights, renters’ rights, breakfast clubs, free nursery hours, the skills agenda for apprenticeships and trainee partnerships, and the youth guarantee to name a few.