MPs describe ‘Dickensian’ child poverty in Devon

The government has been urged to lift the two-child benefits cap as families in Devon slip into ‘Dickensian’ poverty.

Families with more than two children born after April 2017 cannot claim child tax credit or universal credit for a third and subsequent children.
Now a Devon MP says the two-child cap is one of the main factors leading to rising cases of ‘deep poverty’ among local children.
South Devon Liberal Democrat MP Caroline Voaden spoke during a House of Commons debate on welfare spending.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately proposed a motion endorsing the two-child cap, saying those who receive benefits should make the same decisions about having children as those who do not.
She said lifting the cap would exacerbate a ‘benefits culture’, and said more cuts in welfare spending would ensure that benefits are there only for those who need them.
Mrs Voaden told the House: “Poverty robs children of their future. It limits their life chances, impacts their long-term health and reduces their ability to participate in the bits of childhood that widen their experience, build resilience and teach new skills.
She said there were children in South Devon going to school hungry, living in overcrowded and unsuitable accommodation, and whose parents are working two or three low-paid jobs just to make ends meet.
“They are the children whose lives have already been limited by the situation they are growing up in,” she said. 
“Emma Hopkins, from the Mother’s Manifesto group in Totnes, told me that they had heard from mothers who were regularly skipping meals so that they could feed their children, living on the brink and racked with anxiety. The mental health impact of that is enormous.
“That is not something we should hear in 2025. It sounds like something from a Dickens novel, but over 5,300 children in South Devon were living in poverty in 2023, facing daily challenges that no child should have to endure.
“If the government lifted the two-child limit today, families across my constituency and everywhere else would feel the difference immediately.”
She said the benefit cap disproportionately harmed some of the most vulnerable people, including single parents, disabled households and families struggling with high housing costs.
“Families in South Devon are particularly hard hit,” she said. “That is not just unfair. It is a failed policy that is causing real harm.”
During the same debate Torbay’s Liberal Democrat MP Steve Darling said a Paignton headteacher had told him children were coming to school cold, hungry and tired.
“I represent the most deprived constituency that has a Liberal Democrat MP,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that children do not choose to be born into large families, so having a benefits system that punishes those children is perverse in the extreme.”
In the vote on the motion 105 MPs, all but two of them Conservatives, voted to endorse the cap. A total of 438 Labour, Liberal Democrat and other MPs voted against it.
The cap was originally brought in by the Conservative government of David Cameron. The current Labour government has considered scrapping it, and has been under pressure from its own MPs to do it, but has not yet done so.