Antonia Bance

The right hon. Member will note that I was making a point about the comparative rates in different areas of the country, including my own, and the impacts of deindustrialisation over the last 50 years, rather than about national rates. On the Labour Benches, we deal with the world as it is—human lives in all their messy complexity—because everyone is deserving of dignity, opportunity and hope, and every child deserves a decent start. That is why I am so proud today to say this: if you get ill or lose your job, if—heaven forbid—your partner dies, or if your husband beats you up and you have to grab your kids and run, the safety net of our welfare state will once again catch you and every single one of your kids. Since the day I came to this place and long before, I have argued for this change—I have argued that no child is responsible for the actions of their parents, that the happy event of a little one being born should not tip a family into poverty, and that whether a six-year-old eats tonight should not depend on how many sisters or brothers they have. This day has come because we have a Labour Government, and for that reason alone. I invite everyone sitting on the Opposition Benches who thinks they had something to do with this day to retract their comments and remember who those children have to thank. Ending the two-child limit helps 5,540 children in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley. Whenever I go on a school visit in my area—where child poverty levels are at 50%, but not for long—I say to that assembly, to those children, “If you have more than two sisters or brothers, please raise your hand.” And I look and the teachers look at the forest of raised hands of children in larger families, and we know what that means. It means that in April, those families will open their universal credit journal or their banking app, and they will see an amount of money that is adequate to meet their family’s needs—not luxury, not extras, but adequate at last. Some 1.6 million children nationally will be helped by the policy that we will pass tonight—one kid in every nine of our kids helped. Most of the families that will be helped—six in 10 of them—are in work. Loads of them—four in 10—have a disabled family member. Some of those families have kids so young that the parents cannot work. Not a single one of them deserves to live in poverty. To the mums with three or more kids, using universal credit to top up low wages and high rents: this is for you. Know that far away in Westminster, a bunch of people you elected to stand up for hard-working, low-income families thought of you and your kids, and took out a gross, punitive law that kept you and your kids poor.