Two-Child Benefit Cap Scrap
The UK’s Autumn Budget 2025 and what it means for families and pregnant women
Letting women know: all of your children are welcome in our society.
If you or someone you know needs help:
The big, shiny red briefcase is out – a little behind most of the details being released. Is it good news for families and pregnant women? We’re still looking into the UK’s Autumn Budget for 2025, but here’s something we’re ready to celebrate:
No more two-child benefit cap!
It’s been an issue since it’s introduction in 2017, and while we have been aware for a while that the two-child benefit cap would be removed this autumn, we’ve breathed a sign of relief to have it officially announced in the Budget.
This is not just about economics. Whereas the government of the time saw ‘extra’ children as a family choice that shouldn’t be subsidised by the tax-payer, Life knows from over 50 years as a pregnancy support charity that there are numerous and complex reasons why people become pregnant, and many are unexpected.
The problem with this approach is that it unconsciously supports a narrative that having children is akin to a financial planning decision that can somehow be judged as prudent or otherwise. Children aren’t commodities, assets or liabilities. Parents of spontaneous multiple births (when you plan for one but get two or three instead!) are just one group that have been unintentionally penalised. The resulting impact on childrens’ and parents’ wellbeing and the increase in child poverty as a result of the two-child benefit cap has been a social experiment gone wrong.
Moving the social narrative
Scrapping the two-child benefit cap is a clear sign that we are finally inching back to a social narrative that values family more highly than economics; that recognises there is no such thing as “fault” when it comes to pregnancy; and that believes every child deserves the same support, protection and opportunity as the next, whatever family they are born into.
Further than that, and most acutely present in Life’s daily work with women facing unexpected pregnancy in some of the most challenging circumstances, this move shouts loud and clear to the unacceptable social practice of judging pregnant women: all of your children are welcome in our society.
Day after day we hear of women torn apart by their need to provide for their existing children and their desire to welcome and nurture an unexpected addition. A woman with only two children shouldn’t have to decide between whether she can continue with the pregnancy or book an abortion based on social inequalities around supporting families.
Pregnant in poverty
This two-child benefit cap scrap doesn’t fix all of the devastating differences in the challenges faced by women and children tight-rope walking the now familiarly termed ‘poverty line’, but it’s a start.
Pregnancy in poverty brings fear and stress that is detrimental to both mother and child. Financial difficulties and responsibilities to existing children are cited as the most common reason for considering abortion according to our Life Helpline clients last month (accounting for an immense 79% of calls in October). This change in how we support families in the UK is a step closer to a society that takes our future generations seriously.
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More reading: “Free” childcare, but at what cost?
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