Opinion: Jonathan Brash Is Wrong — Child Poverty is only Set to Get Worse...

Mr Brash's claims of thousands being lifted out of poverty with the lifting of the two child cap seems to be significantly flawed

Governments Own Data Dismantles Brash’s Claim: Council Tax Support, Not Benefit Caps, Drove Child Poverty & Raising the Two Child Limit Wont Help Struggling Families.

6th December 2025

Hartlepool MP Jonathan Brash has claimed the Government’s recent Budget has “lifted thousands of children out of poverty.”

Sadly, its a statement that collapses under even the lightest scrutiny. Worse still, it relies on a false premise that the rise in child poverty across the UK was caused primarily — or even solely — by the Two-Child Benefit Cap.

This narrative is convenient for Labour MP's who want to claim victory today by blaming yesterday’s Conservative policies. But the inconvenient truth for Mr Brash is this: Child poverty began rising four years before the two-child limit even existed.

And the data pointing to this reality isn’t obscure. It is publicly available, repeatedly analysed, and clear in its trajectory. If Mr Brash genuinely wants to address child poverty, he must first acknowledge what actually caused it — and what the evidence shows is a far more substantial, far more damaging policy change than the two-child cap.

Brash's Argument 'Fundamentally Flawed', As Child Poverty Started Rising in 2013 — Not 2016..

Numerous Statistics show Child Poverty was going up & started to rapidly climb when LCTS was introduced back in 2013

Let us begin with the most critical fact: Relative child poverty hit 27.1% in 2013 — the year the long-term decline in child poverty stopped and began reversing.

From 2013 to 2023, child poverty climbed steadily to around 30–31%. But what makes this trend even more revealing is the breakdown by family size:

• Large families (three or more children) saw poverty soar from around 33% in 2013 to over 50% by 2019/20.

  
  

• One- and two-child families, the ones supposedly crushed by the two-child limit, saw stable or even falling poverty rates during this period.

  
  

• Recent figures (2022–2023) show poverty stabilising around 30%, long after the two-child limit took effect — suggesting the upward trend had other causes.

  
  

This data alone dismantles Mr Brash’s claim. If the two-child cap was the main driver, poverty among one- or two-child families would have risen sharply. However, the figures show It did not.

So what did happen in 2013 that impacted the poorest families so severely?

The Real Culprit: Council Tax Benefit Abolition in 2013

Child Poverty began to increase as soon as the government abolished Council Tax Benefit, replacing it with a locally administered Local Council Tax Support Scheme, which reduced a persons support by up to 20%

In 2013, the Government replaced Council Tax Benefit with Localised Council Tax Support (LCTS). This was not a minor administrative shift — it was a fundamental restructuring of how low-income households pay Council Tax.

Under LCTS, Full Council Tax relief was abolished in most areas, with families on the lowest incomes suddenly having to pay between 10–20%  of their Yearly Council Tax bill, with Councils introducing strict enforcement and court action because Council Tax, to them 'is a priority debt'.

This means money that should have gone towards food, heating, clothing, and essentials for children was now diverted into Council Tax liabilities.

This structural change hit the largest families hardest, which explains perfectly why their poverty levels spiked whilst smaller families remained relatively stable.

Three years later, when the two-child cap arrived, the poverty trajectory was already firmly set.

This means : Child poverty was rising not because of the two-child limit — but because LCTS forced thousands of the poorest families to pay Council Tax for the first time.

This is the part of the conversation Mr Brash never mentions.

Why Jonathan Brash’s Claim Doesn’t Hold Up

Just like the £20bn 'Black Hole' in the Governments Finances, the reasons for lifting the two child limit look equally as watertight as the governments budget.

Mr Brash’s assertion that the Budget has “lifted thousands of children out of poverty” depends on a simplified storyline: “Two-child cap bad — Labour removes it — poverty falls.” But the deeper truth is that the rise in poverty he attributes to the cap actually began under an entirely different policy framework.

Even more inconveniently for Labour’s narrative, forecasts show that child poverty is still expected to rise in future years, even with the two-child cap lifted. That alone should silence the triumphalist rhetoric — but instead, MPs like Brash are doubling down.

If Mr Brash truly cares about tackling the root causes of poverty in Hartlepool, he must confront an uncomfortable reality:

You cannot fix a problem if you refuse to name the real cause.

And the cause — proven in a decades worth of data — is the 2013 Council Tax Support reforms.

Hartlepool Can't Take Much More of Labours Political Spin

Jonathan Brash is telling residents a story that whilst politically convenient (for him at least), is statistically untrue.

Child poverty did not begin with the two-child limit, and removing that cap will not undo a decade-long trend that started with Council Tax Support reforms.

Hartlepool families — especially large families — were plunged into financial hardship not because of the number of children they have, but because the state shifted essential costs onto the very households least able to pay them.

If Mr Brash wants to talk about child poverty, he should start telling the whole truth.

Because until the role of Council Tax Support is acknowledged as being a failure and reformed, no amount of political boasting will lift Hartlepool’s children out of poverty.

Its only going to get worse !