Bishop’s Stortford Liberal Democrats champion action on child poverty by East Herts Council

East Herts Council is to set up a working group to address child poverty after voting to ask the Government to remove the two-child benefit limit.

The cap – which prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or Universal Credit for more than two youngsters – was introduced by the Conservative Government in 2017.

Shortly after taking power after last July’s General Election, Labour announced a new ministerial task force to work on a child poverty strategy, but the party did not lift the Tory limit.

When the Scottish National Party tabled an unsuccessful amendment to axe the cap, seven Labour MPs rebelled, voting for the change. Prime Minister Keir Starmer suspended their whip for six months as a result.

At the latest full meeting of East Herts Council, Bishop’s Stortford Liberal Democrat Cllr Simon Marlow, backed by town party colleague Cllr Sarah Copley, tabled a motion calling on the Government to take urgent action.

He said: “There has been a sharp rise in the number of children living in poverty in this country since 2015. There are now 4.3 million children growing up in poverty and many of them are living in households where at least one parent is working.”

He cited figures from charity Barnardo’s that one in every 11 children in Hertfordshire is living in poverty. In East Herts, one in 20 youngsters is struggling. Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions showed that 1,958 children under 16 in the district were living in poverty in March 2023.

Cllr Copley, who has a seven-year-old daughter, battled tears as she told the council of another mum who relies on Universal Credit and was driven to desperation by the loss of free school meals for her child.

A third Bishop’s Stortford Lib Dem, Cllr Chris Wilson, said: “There are parents and families in every ward of this district who are struggling financially. There are things that are out of their control that they can do little or nothing about in their current situation.

“What happens to children in poverty? They get worse health and educational outcomes for a start, putting pressure on our services and damaging their prospects.

“The Labour Government simply has to pay this money for the sake of the children, but also in the long term this saves money for the council and the country.”

Cllr Wilson warned: “There are frustrated, disempowered people out there. They are frustrated and stymied by the system at every turn. If we don’t help them and make changes, they will lose and often have lost faith in mainstream politics, and we can look across the pond to see what happens then.”

The Lib Dem motion won support from their Green coalition partners but the authority’s Labour and Conservative members abstained.

Hertford Labour councillors Carolyn Redfern and Nahum Clements said they were confident their party was tackling child poverty, despite “a difficult set of restraints”.

The Conservatives said they supported the principle of the motion, but abstained because they wanted more direct local action.

Sawbridgeworth’s Cllr Eric Buckmaster said: “It’s only the motion, not the aim, that I’m concerned about.”

He said the Government would simply ask which other benefits should be cut to cover the extra costs of restoring full child benefit and Universal Credit to larger families.

“I would prefer to have a working group and sit down properly and come up with something that we can all agree with,” said Cllr Buckmaster.

The leader of the council, the Green Party’s Cllr Ben Crystall, said it was possible to do that as well as support the motion.

His party colleague, Cllr Vicky Smith, said that as a teacher in Bengeo she had witnessed hungry children and it was short-sighted not to spend money “at every opportunity” to support youngsters in need.

As the debate ended, Cllr Copley said that abstaining because of technicalities was “ludicrous”.

She said: “Can’t we get together and send a message [to the Government] and then look separately at what we can do?”

The council will ask Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to “take urgent steps to remove the two-child limit on payment of all social security benefits”, reinstate the uplift of £20 in Universal Credit and pay this uplift to parents under 25 as well as those over that age.