Charlotte Cane

I commend Cotswold district council for that work. Unfortunately, when I tried to get East Cambridgeshire district council to condemn the two-child cap, the Conservatives refused. This policy was poorly conceived from the outset and has amounted to little more than attacks—not on parents, but on vulnerable children growing up in a cost of living crisis. My Ely and East Cambridgeshire constituency, which is relatively wealthy and has relatively high-paid work, is thankfully below the national average for child poverty. However, child poverty has continued to rise there despite the fact that 70% of affected households have at least one parent in work. Clearly, this is not a case of families scrounging off the system, but of family budgets stretched to breaking point. Nationally, the picture looks similarly grim. Child poverty has increased over the past 15 years, pushing 850,000 more children into poverty. In rural areas such as my constituency, poverty can be all the more challenging: parents must travel miles to reach a supermarket or a food bank for affordable food, transport costs for school and work are far higher, fuel costs are higher and children are often socially isolated. We should never have got to this point. The previous Conservative Government should have recognised that the two-child limit was both a failed experiment and salt in the wound for families dealing with spiralling costs in food, energy and basic necessities. I welcome the Government’s decision to make this correction, but it must be seen as the first step in improving the quality of life for children and building a better future. The Child Poverty Action Group estimates that child poverty may cost in excess of £39 billion a year, accounting for additional public spending in areas such as health and education, as well as future tax receipt losses from resulting unemployment. Behind that economic loss are children, who will, having missed out on sports clubs and healthy food, face a higher risk of disabilities and long-term health conditions—and, as we heard earlier, they even face an increased chance of early death. They are not afforded the opportunities to develop and pursue their own interests. Many may miss out on higher education, apprenticeships and even early employment. The Bill is about the future of all children living in this country. We must ensure they are equipped with the resources to thrive and the ability to contribute to a society that supports them from the very start. In that spirit, will the Minister agree to annual reviews of the entire universal credit system to ensure that it keeps pace with the cost of living and becomes an effective tool to tackle child poverty?